Made Me Realize
by roads-go-ever-on
Summary: Or, five times Bucky spoke with the team and one time he didn't have to. Post the events of The Winter Soldier, it takes Bucky some time to readjust to the world (and particularly the people) around him.
1. End of the Line

**AN: **

**Hello readers!**

**This little tidbit was my prompt fill for the Gen Fic Swap over at AO3. My prompter requested a fic dealing with the aftermath of the Winter Soldier and Bucky getting used to the world again. I'll be posting the chapters one by one here over the next couple of days. Keep an eye out for them!**

**This was an incredibly fun story to write, as I have never had a chance to write an entirely Bucky centric fic until now. He's an interesting head to get into, and it was certainly a wild ride. Be warned, there's a healthy smattering of angst to balance out the quips (c'mon, of course there is, this is Bucky fresh out of the Winter Soldier brainwashing) and while it is certainly not too heavy, I figured it would be best to give you a warning.**

**With that out of the way, standard disclaimer is standard. I do not own any of these characters. The only thing I own is my writing.**

**Happy reading!**

* * *

><p>It took five months, two weeks, and four days to find him in the end.<p>

They'd followed their intel, and like they had for the past half year, they had saddled up and taken off in the direction they only hoped he would still be heading in by the time they got there. They held tightly onto the thought that the next op wouldn't come up as empty handed as the last thousand they had conducted, but after so much time had passed, they couldn't quite keep the niggling feeling of doubt that had slowly but surely begun to creep into their minds.

He ignored the feeling for the sake of his sanity.

Sam was always there beside him. Or, above him, as it were. Natasha helped where she could, the newfound trust between them sparking a camaraderie that he would have preferred be created through much less drastic means. As explosive a camaraderie as it was, however, a camaraderie it was all the same.

They had gradually made progress. Slowly, slowly the net they had begun weaving around their target closed in on itself, and the chase took them from stateside to stateside, one edge of the country to the next as they pursued him. It was just Sam and Steve together the day they finally cornered him much closer to home than they ever had imagined in a waterlogged cabin in the mountains of Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

The downpour had practically soaked the abandoned building to it's foundations, and as Steve had nudged the rotted wood of the door open slowly, his shield held tightly to his arm, the soft dripping of the rain running through the gaping cracks in the roof and falling steadily into the puddles coating the carpet were the first things he had truly noticed.

The second thing was the pair of legs sticking out from the darkest corner of the building, the booted feet pointing in opposite directions and laying perfectly still.

Steve had waved Sam off then (much to the pilot's chagrin) and had stepped carefully inside, his own boots disturbing the steadily growing puddles and making the floorboard creak slightly. He had stopped then, eyes never leaving the shadowed form in the corner. There was no reaction to the noise, and he had continued his slow approach.

By the time he was kneeling in front of the slumped figure, his eyes had picked up on every detail Bucky had to silently offer.

His back was against the splintered wall, the water seeping through his tattered shirt and puddling around him, swirls of dirt and grime running in rivulets down his form and collecting on the rugged floor. His arms were limp at his sides, the glint from the metal of his prosthetic drawing attention away from the shape the cybernetic enhancement was truly in. Dents littered its surface, and if Steve had to guess from the angle it was at, some of the joints were either entirely or well on their way to being out of order. His hands were splayed lightly on the ground, palms open and facing upwards as water dripped steadily from the ceiling to land neatly in his flesh hand, the liquid gently running down the sides of his fingers. Overall, he had looked like he had beaten and battered and generally needed to sleep for a week. It was difficult to tell from the still figure alone if he was his own mind.

But his face.

His face gave Steve pause.

His eyes were staring into nothing, not even a flicker of his eyelids giving any sign that he had noticed Steve crouching in front of him. Purple bruises stood stark against his chalky skin beneath those unseeing eyes, and his mouth was a thin-lipped line, the perfect picture of tension as his jaw ticked slightly from the pressure of being locked for god knew how long. His hair clung to his face in sopping strands, the tight clasp of it emphasizing the gauntness of his face as it framed his cheekbones.

Steve wasn't one to sugarcoat nowadays.

He looked like hell.

Steve had remained silent for a long time, his eyes just roving slowly, blankly over the man who had once been his best friend. The quiet was only interrupted by the steady dripping of the rain on the roof and the carpet. He could hear Sam huffing in frustration just outside the door after another minute of silence passed with no movement from either side.

He had just opened his mouth to address the fallen soldier when Bucky spoke, his voice a hollow echo of what it used to be.

"End of the line."

Steve blinked as the ghost in front of him finally moved, his head tilting back so he could look the man kneeling before him in the eye. A spark of something was in them again, and the dull glassiness they had held only minutes before seemed to be disappearing as his jaw unclenched with a jumpy tick.

"You meant that."

Steve grinned slowly at the hoarse words. It was a grin full of sadness and desperate hope, but a grin nonetheless.

"Yeah, I did." He hesitated then before continuing slowly with a humorless laugh. "I've been told I'm… stubborn that way."

Bucky stared at him for a long while, the rain dripping down his face and carving a line through the grime on his cheeks. Then, with a slow twist of the corners of his lips that seemed almost painful to him, he grinned.

For the first time since Steve had seen him before enlisting, Bucky grinned. They stayed that way for a short while, Steve with his elbows resting lightly on his knees, his hands clasped loosely and dangling between his crouched legs as he regarded the broken man before him. Bucky had shaken his head softly, his eyes never leaving Steve's face. The light in his eyes sparkled even brighter, and his grin grew heartbreakingly stretched when Steve realized the moisture on his friend's face was not all accountable from the rain. Bucky shifted then, his prosthetic moving with a creaking groan and staying splayed awkwardly to his side. He ignored it as his eyes searched Steve's face. When he opened his mouth again, his watery grin wavered alongside the pained relief that had swamped his eyes.

"Steve."

Steve's smile grew broader, and he ignored Sam's muffled complaints coming through the walls as he stared back into the eyes of his reclaimedfriend.

"Heya, Bucky. It's been a while."

He'd willingly taken the offered arm from Steve then, his face morphing into a pained grimace of a grin that didn't match the haunted glaze covering his eyes. He'd stumbled out of the soaked cabin with Steve's support, barely registering when another man silently slid beneath his other arm and hefted the rest of his weight off of his feet entirely. He was too busy dealing with the last of the demons whirling inside his mind as he clasped the hand on Steve's shoulder into his friend's- _not mission, never a mission-_shirt, desperate for some anchor point into reality that wasn't_assign, search, kill, assign, search, kill._ A chunk of the wall he'd never realized had been erected in his mind fell away with a silent huff of an exhale as he drew himself and his entourage to a stumbling stop, and he blinked up at the man on his left who had gone through hell and back for him.

And just like that, the Winter Soldier died.

But James 'Bucky' Barnes was reborn in the support of a spy and a soldier outside of a waterlogged cabin in the shelter of the mountains of Tennessee.

* * *

><p>The first week after he'd been found was hazed over, the vague flashes of images he got at some times not substantial enough for him to know if they were real or simply illusions pulled up from an overly exhausted mind.<p>

Heat and flames. The rattling of gunfire. The wind whipping through his hair.

A soft scratchiness on his skin and a white ceiling. Blonde hair. A familiar face.

Bitter cold. Agony and ice.

A steady, staccato beep. Murmuring voices. Papers shuffling.

Screaming. Orders. Obedience.

_No._

_Not anymore._

When he came to himself enough to be aware of his surroundings, the first things he took in were the pillows at his back and a blanket tucked around his knees. His vision had been blurred as he had groggily blinked back to reality, the odd assortment of tubes and tape littering his arms the first thing he truly saw. He couldn't quite bring himself to panic at the sight. He'd seen it enough over the last fifty years (was it really fifty? God, he didn't know…) to really be fazed by the objects. His eyes had roved upwards then, landing on the sleek white surroundings of the single ward. The harsh coldness of the bleached walls hurt to look at, so his eyes had drifted to the only object in the room that wasn't quite so unnaturally unfamiliar.

Steve had been there, his feet kicked up and crossed on the edge of the bed and a glossy magazine held loosely in his hands, his head tilted down towards the object on his lap. His eyes had been staring blankly at the pages, and as Bucky had looked at him, the sudden mantra of _Steve Steve Steve that's_ _Steve, oh god, he survived, he's here, thank god, I didn't kill him, my best friend, oh god_ rushed through his longer he had looked at him, the more his chest felt like it was going to implode with the conflicting swell of happiness and sheer agony.

The feeling had culminated in a long, low groan.

Steve had started violently at the noise, the magazine falling to the floor with a pitiful _thwap _as his hands flailed suddenly to grip for the arms of the stiff hospital chair_. _His legs had kicked back from the bed with a jerk, and the momentum had sent him crashing to the floor with a shocked "Buc-_woah!" _The rattling of the collapsed metal chair reverberated in the room as hestared up from his sprawled position at Bucky, who had regarded him blankly from the elevated bed, the suddenness of Steve's change in position not quite registering just yet in his groggy mind. It was a long minute before the atmosphere changed enough for words to even be considered.

Bucky was the first to break the silence.

He had opened his mouth and seized slightly as he had choked, a hacking noise erupting from his throat and his eyes boring into Steve's as the man scrambled to find his feet. Steve's brow had been furrowed in worry as he had gripped Bucky's bicep, his eyes roving rapidly over his friend as the horrible noise continued. His voice had been high and, if Bucky hadn't known any better at the time, on the verge of panic.

"Bucky? Hey, you alright? What's wr-"

Bucky had cut him off then by rolling his head back on the pillow and letting loose a loud, unreigned, undoubtedly hysterical laugh.

Steve had stared at him for a long moment as he kept laughing, the noise and sensation unfamiliar to him in a way that made him want to quit laughing and start sobbing. When had he last laughed? He truly couldn't remember. The sound was harsh and grating, puffing out in a wheezing echo of what his laugh might once have been, but it seemed to be enough to have Steve dropping his head and loosening his death grip on Bucky's arm. When he straightened out again, a painfully gaping smile was stretched across his face, and if his eyes were apprehensively relieved when he coughed a short laugh of his own, Bucky dutifully ignored the fact.

He had laughed until it hurt, and then he kept right on laughing, tears springing to his eyes as the hoarse feeling scraped at his throat. All of the tension and bitterness and pressure of what he would have to accept as his excruciating reality lightened, just barely lightened as the hysteria passed and a thick swarm of simple _relief _to have been pulled back from the brink rushed over him, leaving the battle in his chest feeling slightly less turbulent than it had before. That was _Steve _next to him shaking with suppressed laughter of his own, his hand gripping his own chest as he trembled with the entirely unexpected reaction.

Steve was there with him.

And that meant he had to finally be going in the right direction.

The manic laughter died out slowly as Bucky had gasped for breath, his hand wiping futilely at his eyes as the beeping noise gradually grew louder than his own choked voice. When Steve had seemed certain he was done with his outburst, he had sat heavily on the edge of the bed, his head shaking as his smile diminished into a tired grin. He'd spoken then, his voice level and just so _Steve_ that Bucky could physically feel his throat constricting with the want to laugh again in his disbelief.

"Not exactly the way I wanted to welcome you back, but with a reception like that, I don't think it was too bad."

Bucky had waited a long minute before he had lifted his flesh shoulder in a tiny shrug, letting it fall heavily back against the pillows. His voice was quiet but strong, a ghost of a grin tugging at his lips.

"It had all the dignity of the clown I know you actually are." He had paused for a moment before tacking on a belated "Captain."

Steve had relaxed in earnest then, the tension in his shoulders draining immediately and causing his entire form to sag in on itself as he had reached a hand out and clasped Bucky's shoulder. He'd given him that little lopsided grin he'd always associated with a scrawny kid from Brooklyn then, and his next words had made Bucky realize the heart he had thought no longer existed might actually still rest in his chest as he felt something lighten inside of him at his friend's steady declaration.

"Welcome back, Bucky."

He only tilted his head back with a tug of a grin on his lips as acknowledgement as Steve righted his chair and settled down, a more serious expression crossing his face. He leaned forward, his chin balanced on the tips of his steepled fingers as he regarded Bucky quietly.

"I hate to have to ask you this now, but it was the only condition they'd give me to let me stay in here with you."

Bucky had felt himself trying desperately to raise an eyebrow, but he doubted it actually happened as he stared blankly back.

Steve took a breath then, scrubbing a hand over his face as he did so before locking eyes with Bucky again.

"How much do you remember?"

The silence lasted a full minute before Bucky finally broke his eye contact, choosing instead to tilt his head back on the pillows and stare blankly at the ceiling. It was easier that way. He didn't have to see the thinly veiled caution in Steve's eyes. He spoke slowly, choosing each word as carefully as he could.

"Just…pieces, here and there. I…" He paused, his throat tightening slightly as he forced himself to press on. "I don't remember thinking. Or really_looking _at anything. But… I remember targets. Names. Faces. Who I killed. Who I made suffer. Who they wanted-" He stopped abruptly, not trusting his next words to not sound strained as he swallowed past the unexpected lump in his throat. He let his head drop with a puff of an exhale, and he caught a glimpse of Steve looking at him with an entirely neutral expression. He couldn't quite keep a humorless laugh from bubbling out at the sight.

That was one of the millions of reasons he'd always liked Steve.

He never reacted until you were well and truly finished.

Bucky had lifted a hand lightly to run through his hair. He was shocked to find it significantly softer than he had remembered it being. Someone must have washed it for him. For some reason, the thought made him want to sob. He continued talking to distract himself from the battle of emotions slowly beginning to swell back in his chest.

"And I remember seeing things I'm… still not sure were real or not. Like… the cars. When did they get so… round?"

It was a poor attempt at lightening the mood, and Bucky watched Steve carefully, his heart pounding painfully as he searched for any kind of reaction. Some tiny part of his mind berated him for the stupidity of it, but he couldn't help looking for any revulsion or grim acceptance.

But Steve had grinned. He'd leaned back in his chair, the lags teetering slightly off of the ground as he spoke.

"If that shocked you, man, you are _not _ready for some of the things I've had to get used to."

And that was the moment Bucky knew things would be alright in the end.

It would take time, but they would.

Steve wouldn't allow anything else.

* * *

><p>He met Sam first.<p>

He'd been cleared from the hospital, but only under incredibly strict orders of a house arrest until something called a "Fury" was in contact with Steve. The name registered dimly for him, and flashes of an enormous explosion and a ruined car sparked across his memory before he could firmly clamp them out.

There had been an incredible amount of arguing in the hallway outside of his room in the hospital when Steve had told him he was getting him out of the ward, but in the end, the doctor had stormed in, tossing the discharge forms onto his lap before spinning on his heel and leaving without a word.

Steve had definitely learned how to debate in the time he'd become America's poster child.

Bucky had walked out of the room and into the moonlit parking lot on his own, his eyes squinting with the sudden darkness of the night. The feeling of clean clothes on his back and freshly washed hair had practically made him bawl with relief when he'd first become aware of the fact. His prosthetic was sticking oddly in some of it's joints, but the feeling was barely a ghost on his mind as he rolled his shoulders, his arm bumpingSteve's as they made their way across the lot. Steve had stuck to his side like glue, his shoulder brushing the cold metal that Bucky still refused to look at sometimes. He could vaguely understand his want of being so close.

Steve had lost his best friend once. He wasn't planning on letting it happen again under his watch.

He'd been _properly_ introduced to Sam Wilson then. The man was leaning against a ridiculously opulent looking sports car, his arms folded tightly across his torso as his face remained expressionless behind his dark sunglasses. Bucky couldn't help but wonder why the hell he would choose to wear sunglasses at night, but from what little he had heard about the man from Steve, he couldn't say he was entirely surprised at the modern mask. Steve had exchanged their names then, and the two had stared each other down for an unnervingly long moment before Sam had shaken his head ruefully with the smallest grin Bucky had ever seen.

"You've got some insane upper body strength, man. I'm guessing you never skipped arm day."

Bucky had only stared blankly at him as the man had popped open the door to the car behind him, sliding into the driver's seat and pressing a button which triggered the other doors to release and glide open over the roof of the bright red and black vehicle. He blinked before shooting an uncertain look to Steve, who had a wry grin of his own on his face. The super soldier had tilted his head back lightly before addressing the lost, questioning look on Bucky's face.

"He's, ah, he's probably going to be sore about the steering wheel thing for a while. Give him some time."

Bucky didn't have the trust in the stability of his sanity to question what he meant by "steering wheel thing".

The drive was surprisingly short as the enormous high rise Steve had told him was their destination rose into sight out the front windshield of the ridiculously high tech car. The outrageously tall building was their apparent lodgings, as Steve had slowly fed him bits of information in the hospital about where he would be going for his "reprogramming," as the doctors had bitterly called it. Steve's ragtag Brady Bunch was based out of the building, and the group seemed to come and go as if it belonged to each of them exclusively. It had sounded as if it truly did, as Steve had explained to him the apartments kept high above the main floors of the tower. Each 'Avenger', as he had awkwardly called them, had their own floor, and was free to come and go as they pleased. Some stayed indefinitely, others dropped by and crashed now and again. He had called ahead when Bucky had first been cleared for departure, and an apartment had already been prepared for him, with him in mind.

Bucky had highly doubted that fact.

It wasn't until they had pulled into the parking garage under the brightly lit building and boarded the sleek, buttonless elevator that Steve told him just who the building belonged to.

Tony Stark.

The name had sparked something in his brain, and something unpleasant rammed mercilessly into his gut as his mind raced through his memories in a desperate search for just what had caused the reaction. He had known Howard Stark briefly. Of course, that had been before the night he had fallen… he had fallen from… from the…

The sudden presence of Steve's hand on his shoulder broke him from his reverie, and he had shot an unsteady glance to his friend when the doors to the elevator closed without a sound. Steve was regarding him with a carefully concerned expression, and Sam was peering over his shoulder, the absence of his sunglasses putting the apprehension in his eyes on perfect display. Bucky pulled in a harsh breath, shaking his head and lightly brushing Steve's hand off as he did so. He could do this.

He _had _to do this.

Steve scrutinized him for another long moment before turning his focus upwards. Bucky found himself watching in disbelief as he began to speak to the paneled ceiling.

"Jarvis, take us to the main floor, please. And let Tony know we're here."

Bucky could almost physically _feel _every dark shadow lingering on his thoughts come to a screeching stop as he stared openly at his friend. He shot a glance to Sam, but the pilot wasn't looking his way, In fact, he wasn't looking at Steve either. He appeared perfectly happy to examine a hangnail on his thumb with the most bored expression Bucky had yet to see in his new life.

He had just begun considering questioning his friend's sanity when a sudden polished voice reverberated throughout the small space.

"Of course, Captain Rogers. Mister Stark has already been notified. He… kindly requests you show Sergeant Barnes his room yourself, as he is further preoccupied in the lower levels at the moment."

Well.

That, Bucky had definitely not been expecting.

He almost missed Steve's snorted "yeah, I bet he is" as the lift began it's ascent, his mind whirling as he sorted through the fragments of his memories of the Winter Soldier. A sentient elevator? What else had changed in the time he'd been under? Surely he would have been aware of something like this-

He must have voiced the thought aloud, because when he blinked himself back into reality, he found Steve rubbing the top of his head sheepishly and Sam looking slightly guilty as he shifted in place. Steve shook his head then as he leaned back against the wall to the elevator, crossing his arms across his chest as he did so.

"Right. Sorry, I should have warned you about Jarvis. Guess it's… well, it's weird to say I've gotten used to it. Just didn't occur to me." He rolled his shoulders slightly as he focused his attention on Bucky's perplexed face. "Jarvis is… well, he's a part of the building, really. He's…" Steve paused, his face puckered in thought as he seemingly searched for the right words. "…a computer program Tony created to help him run the place."

The steady voice suddenly drifted back into the room, the faintest hint of reproach in it's accented tone. "All due respect, Captain Rogers, but I am in fact an artificial intelligence system. And my sole purpose is not to "run the place", as you so loosely put it."

Steve raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, the slightest hint of a grin on his face. "Sorry, Jarvis. Still getting used to the terminology myself." At the sight of Bucky's anxious expression, he sobered instantly.

"Don't worry about it, Buck. He's here to help."

The elevator slowed considerably then as Bucky wrestled with something to say in response, and as the doors slid open with a sleek _swoosh_, Bucky got his first glimpse of the interior of Stark Tower.

It was already too much.

Steve stepped out of the elevator in front of him, seemingly unaware of his gaping expression as he stared openly at the enormous windows that looked out over the lights of the city and the ridiculous amount of plushly cushioned furniture scattered in a loose circle around a long, low table in a recessed part of the carpeted floor. An enormous screen was set up in the center of the circle, and a three dimensional symbol that looked identical to the one on the outside of the building was spinning lazily across it. He turned his focus away from the seating area as he stepped into view of what looked like the entrance to a sleek kitchen. A bar was all that stood between the room and the tile of the kitchen, and Bucky couldn't keep himself from gawking at the ridiculous amount of alcohol shelved over the counter. There was no way one man would ever need that much hard liquor.

He second guessed that thought as his brain cruelly flickered back to his past year in that moment.

Steve's voice broke into his reverie then, and he pulled himself out of his staring to look at his friend, who was standing with his hands in his pockets as he leaned lightly against an overstuffed couch in the other room. "Stark has a thing for the grandiose. In case you haven't noticed yet." The sarcasm in his voice didn't go over Bucky's head, but he found all he could do was nod absently as his eyes roved around the room. When he reached the point where his eyes were simply staring at nothing in particular, Sam stepped forward with a roll of his shoulders and a pop of his neck. The pilot groaned lightly as he stretched before darting his eyes between Steve and Bucky.

"Well, uh… I'm going to hit the sack, gentlemen. Been a bit of a long day and I could use some serious sleep right about now before I leave tomorrow." He locked eyes with Bucky, and while they didn't hold the same amount of suspicion they had in the elevator, they were still apprehensive.

It hurt Bucky that he couldn't blame him.

Sam stuck a hand out, that small grin on his face again. "Good to have finally met you, man. I hope you stick around for a while. I'll stop in and visit when I can." The questioning look on Bucky's face had him shrugging with a sigh. "Got lot of things I need to settle now. It's… definitely going to take a while. But hey. I'll deal."

Bucky regarded him for a short second before gripping the hand offered and giving it a single, solid shake, his only response a nod. It appeared to be all Sam needed, as he turned on his heel and walked past Steve with a mocking salute before disappearing down the hallway at the end of the room. Steve just smiled with a snort before turning back to address Bucky, who was standing awkwardly in the middle of the room.

"The rest of the team will probably be stopping through in the next few days. They tend to come and go. I'll introduce you eventually. You'll probably end up meeting Tony first." He paused, a slightly bitter expression on his face. "If he ever leaves the lab, that is."

Bucky was almost relieved he hadn't met this Tony yet.

Steve took him back to the elevator then, allowing Jarvis to bring them up a few floors to the level which undoubtedly held Bucky's room. He stood outside of the smooth faced door uncertainly, and at a slight cough from Steve, the door opened on it's own accord. Bucky glanced ruefully at the ceiling.

He got the feeling this Jarvis never let anyone in the building out of it's sight.

Bucky stepped into the dark room slowly, his eyes struggling to adjust to the inky blackness. He stood rooted to the spot for a moment before Steve stepped in after him and pressed a small button on the wall that Bucky hadn't even thought to give any attention to. The lights rose slowly, and Bucky found his face going slack at the sight in front of him.

There was a leather couch stretched across the middle of the room turned towards a floor to ceiling window with an astounding view of the city lights. A small coffee table sat in front of it, a stack of incredibly thick books artfully placed in the center. There was a smaller chair off to the side, and a sleek screen not unlike the one downstairs mounted on the wall in the corner. A large bookshelf was leaning carefully against the other wall, and as Bucky slowly walked past it with his eyes roving over the spines, he was unsurprised to find a few titles of his favorite pieces. A small kitchenette with a gleaming refrigerator and a fully stocked wet bar stood on one side of the room, and a step down to the other side revealed a doorway that led to a comfortable bedroom, all thick sheets and enough pillows to suffocate in. The bathroom had an enormous shower with more complicated handles and knobs than most aircraft did, and Bucky stared in disbelief as he counted five separate shower heads poking from odd spots in the ceiling and walls. A walk in closet was fully stocked with flannels and loose tee shirts, and as he roamed over to examine them, he vaguely noted that they were his size. The entire apartment was quite literally designed for him.

Bucky hated it.

As he stared at the deliberate attempts of creating something relatable, he found the hole in his heart growing larger despite his desperate attempts to stem the bleeding. He should have some sort of connection with the few personal things in this room, but try as he might, he couldn't find it. He couldn't find it.

It almost felt like whatever piece of him had once been able to connect with his past life had just up and died.

Steve broke the silence then, his steady voice barely registering in Bucky's inner turmoil. "There should be something more comfortable to sleep in in the closet there. The showers aren't really that difficult, either, if you wanted to clean up a bit. Just ignore all of the extra…" He flapped a hand helplessly as he searched for a word. He gave up on it as he noted Bucky's forlorn expression. Steve was silent for a moment before clearing his throat. "I can crash on the couch in here, y'know. If you're not comfortable with being alone-"

"No, it's fine," Bucky interrupted as he caught up with the conversation. He turned to face his friend in full, a desperate attempt at looking comfortable pulling his face into a ghost of his old expression. He continued before Steve could interrupt. "Super soldier or not, you need sleep, too. Don't pretend like you got any the entire week you were waiting up in the hospital."

Steve had the sense of self to look sheepish, and he rubbed at the back of his head lightly. "It's really not a problem-"

"Steve." Bucky stepped forward, planting his flesh hand solidly on his friend's shoulder. "I'm okay. I just… I just want to think a few things through. And honestly, all I really want to do is sleep at this point."

His friend regarded him for another long moment, his face clearly giving away that he knew he was lying. He shrugged lightly then as he stepped back to the door, his expression uncertain. "If you need anything, ask Jarvis, you got that? My place is right down the hall."

Bucky nodded half heartedly, and Steve raised an eyebrow at him.

"I mean that. Don't try to sort through things on your own, Bucky. I can help you."

Bucky just smiled sadly at him.

"You got it."


	2. Awkward Encounters and Poptarts

Sleep didn't come to him those first few nights in the tower. He found himself sitting at the long couch in his living area instead of trying to sleep, a small glass of something of varying strength in his hand and his feet propped loosely on the table as his eyes roved slowly over the thousands of lights flickering below. The city was garishly beautiful, and the steady stream of headlights filtering in and out of the roads like cells down a vein numbed his mind into an almost meditative state. It became a ritual of his to grab his glass and start counting the lights until his eyes crossed and he just couldn't think anymore. Memories were constantly pushing on the edges of his mind, but he kept them at bay with a slowly strengthening will and a long night by that window.

By the third night, however, he was restless.

Steve had stopped in for both of the days, sitting with him by the bookcase and sharing news and history and stories in snippets. He kept the conversations light and easily changeable, and Bucky had never been more grateful for a friend like him in his entire life. The daylight would pass easily into nighttime, and Steve would show him how to use the complicated appliances in his kitchen to create a halfway decent meal. He'd spoken to Jarvis several times as well, and it irked Bucky slightly that the AI was present in his room too. The feeling of constantly being watched did little to help his insomnia.

He still had yet to see hide nor hair of Tony Stark. Steve was increasingly agitated that the man hadn't appeared yet, and his constant questions of his whereabouts to Jarvis always yielded the same answer: he was in the labs of the lower levels and wished not to be disturbed.

Bucky couldn't shake the feeling he was being avoided somehow.

He didn't really mind much.

He really wasn't in much of a meet and greet sort of mood. Honestly, he wasn't really in much of an _anything _mood. He still felt oddly empty, and the shadows swirling around the edges of his mind threatened to crash back over him at any second.

This particular night, Bucky did not sit at his couch to watch the lights dim and glow. He found his feet itching to move, and before he had truly decided on what he was doing, he had slipped out of his room and padded silently down the hallway towards the elevator. The heels of his sweatpants brushed the cold tile floors with a light _swish_ing noise, and he couldn't quite keep from shivering as the chill of the hallway seeped into his thin tee shirt. The joint between his skin and the metal of his arm ached something fierce, but he had learned to ignore it at some point in his new lifetime. He didn't dare think when.

He found the elevator with little incident, and as he stepped up to the door, it swished open for him. Stepping inside softly and blinking at the harshness of the lights, he watched as the doors swiveled shut. It was a long moment before he remembered how the elevator operated. He had just opened his mouth when Jarvis spoke, his tone low and, if Bucky didn't know any better, slightly encouraging.

"Which floor would you like, Sergeant Barnes?"

Bucky coughed to cover his embarrassment before speaking. "Ah, main floor." He tacked on a belated "please" as the elevator began to move. When Jarvis spoke again, he didn't miss the tinge of amusement in the AI's tone.

"Of course, sir."

The doors opened on a seemingly empty floor, and Bucky stepped out with an awkward "thanks." The feeling of being monitored didn't leave him, and he didn't doubt that Steve had asked Jarvis to keep an eye on him. He knew they wouldn't just let him move around on his own without supervision.

Like a criminal.

He brushed the thought off as he stepped further into the room, his eyes roaming over the furniture and the screens slowly. There wasn't really a reason he had chosen to come here. He just wanted to wander a bit for a change in scenery, and the main entrance had been the first thing to pop to his mind when Jarvis had asked.

He had just started wondering what was down the hallway Sam had disappeared down just days before when the sense of being watched changed drastically.

This wasn't the feeling he got from Jarvis.

This was the feeling of living, physical eyes on his back.

He spun to face the kitchen, instinctively dropping into a defensive crouch. He had no sooner done so than a booming voice addressed him from over the bar.

"_Who goes there?_"

Bucky stared from his tense position at the owner of the voice. The man was standing in the kitchen and peering out at him with suspicion, something rectangular and obnoxiously pink held tightly in his hands. His long hair was loose over his shoulders, and the top of his head practically brushed the ceiling. The longer Bucky looked, the more outrageous he seemed. A flowing, scarlet cape was clasped to his shoulders, and an oddly fantasy-esque breastplate covered his chest. A matching helmet was set on the counter, and an enormous hunk of what looked like rock with a worn stick jutting out from the middle was haphazardly placed next to it.

_Thor, _something whispered in his mind. Steve had attempted to describe the team to him during one of his days in the hospital, and this man could not have been anyone other than the Asgardian himself. The realization did little to help him relax, and he tensed further as the god stepped out from behind the counter, the pink objects in his hands falling neatly onto a plate as he did so. Bucky couldn't quite stop himself from taking a step back as Thor strode towards him. He was looking increasingly hostile as he advanced with his hand reaching towards the bulky hammer on the counter, and Bucky was just starting to mentally berate himself for choosing this floor when he was rescued by Jarvis' smooth voice piping evenly into the room.

"That is Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, master Thor. He is here under orders for recovery. Captain Rogers brought him in."

Thor stopped in his tracks, his gaze turning upwards in what was apparently the universally accepted location of Jarvis. When he looked back down to scrutinize Bucky in a new light, some sort of realization struck him, and a grin spread slowly across his face as his eyes widened marginally.

"Barnes? Yes, _Barnes! _Rogers has been searching for you for a long while, my friend. You've been most elusive! It is good to see you are at last well!"

The sudden 180 in his persona caught Bucky off guard, and it took him a long minute to unclench his muscles and stand straight to look the beaming god in the eye. He cleared his throat slightly, thanking Jarvis silently for the save as he responded with an awkward roll of his shoulders.

"Uh… thank you. It's…" He paused, trailing off lamely. "It's… good to be back."

The lackluster response didn't appear to dampen Thor's spirit, however, as he smiled even wider. "Well met, friend Barnes." He paused for a brief moment before striding even further forward with a speed that should have been impossible for a man his size. Bucky backpedaled as quickly as he could, but despite his efforts, Thor was standing right in front of him in seconds. The god looked down at him with an amicable grin as he spoke.

Shouted, was more like it.

"I am Thor, son of Odin. I am pleased to have met you, Barnes!"

He clapped a large hand onto Bucky's metal shoulder, and the force was enough to buckle his knees slightly with the boisterous introduction. He clenched his metal fist creakily, rolling the shoulder to reset the many layers of locked metal as best he could with a grimace. Thor's brow furrowed as he seemingly took his first notice of the glinting prosthetic. His eyes widened as he stared at the interlocking sheets of metal in earnest, genuine fascination on his face as they moved fluidly over one another.

"You are not unlike the Man of Metal, it appears. This is a truly incredible contraption!"

Bucky didn't say anything in response. He didn't trust himself to.

His arm was many things. Incredible was not one of them.

The Asgardian made his way back into the kitchen as he continued speaking, and he reclaimed the odd pink things from the plate with a gusto. "We must speak in full when you are recovered, friend Barnes. I am sure you have many valiant tales to be told if you are a comrade from Captain Roger's time."

Bucky found himself slowly easing onto a stool on the side of the bar despite himself, and he mentally started in shock at the movement. He really didn't want to discuss _anything_ at two in the morning with an over enthused god in the middle of an elusive billionaire's kitchen, but he couldn't quite find it in himself to just go on his merry way. Something enticed him to sit, so sit he did.

He clasped his hands together as he rested his arms on the counter and leaned forward on the stool, a carefully neutral expression on his face.

"Yeah, well. I don't know about 'valiant', but I've got a few decent stories up my sleeve." He paused as Thor fumbled with the cord of what looked like a very complicated toaster, his brow furrowed in deep concentration. Bucky continued slowly, already regretting continuing the conversation as he awkwardly fumbled for words. "Have you… have you been here for a while? Steve didn't mention you were in the building."

Thor glanced up at him before returning to his wrestling with the plug, his booming voice lowered a notch as he spoke pleasantly. "Nay, I have only just arrived. You are the first to greet me. I will alert the others of my presence in the morn, as I am certain they are weary."

Bucky blinked, the words filtering through his brain sluggishly. He didn't doubt that if he had gotten more than ten collective minutes of sleep in the past three days, the Asgardian's flowery words wouldn't be so difficult to process. As it were, he sounded like he was speaking an entirely different language.

"Ah," he settled with for a response. "I'm… uh, not sure if any of the others are here, actually." He folded his arms, tucking his hands neatly against the insides of the opposite elbows and leaning against them on the counter as he watched Thor's increasing agitation with the toaster. The chill from his metal hand on the skin of his arm anchored him harshly, and he spoke as much to distract himself as to continue the stilted conversation. "You're the first of the team I've actually met-"

He stopped abruptly and raised a brow as Thor suddenly exploded with an odd sounding curse and tugged harshly on the plug, practically severing it from the cord. Against his better judgement, Bucky spoke dryly.

"What did the toaster ever do to you?"

Thor regarded him blankly, and Bucky pulled his mouth into a taught line, regret already seeping into his conscience. "It's a… it's a joke. Not a very good one apparently. But it… look, do you need help with that? What are you even trying to do?"

Thor held the cord aloft and swung it wildly, the frustration in his eyes positively comical as he growled. "The infernal line on this device refuses to yield! It is much too short to insert into it's proper place!" He gestured angrily at the power outlet in the wall. Bucky focused his attention duly on the cord to the toaster, his confusion dispersing as he saw the problem.

"It's retractable."

Thor stared at him for a long moment before beaming. "Bless you!"

Bucky blinked uncertainly at him for a long moment before shaking his head. This was by far one of the weirdest conversations he had ever had.

And that was saying something.

"Uh… excuse me?"

Thor simply continued smiling serenely as he made a loose gesture with his hand. "I have been informed that when one sneezes on this planet, it is customary to bless them."

Bucky stared at him, his face slack as he huffed out a short, stuttering laugh. So the big guy had a sense of humor. He shook his head, a grin slowly working it's way onto his face.

He was already starting to warm up to the god.

Reaching out his flesh hand with a questioning look and a deadpan "may I?", he gripped the cord from Thor's hand and pressed a button on the side of it's base, causing the length of wires and rubber to extend significantly.

"The cord is _retractable_. Steve showed me how to use the one upstairs, it's exactly the same."

When the plug was fully extended, he offered it back to Thor, who was looking on in awe. The Asgardian suddenly let loose a booming laugh.

"By the gods, you are truly an intelligent man, friend Barnes! I look forward to fighting alongside you one day!"

Bucky blanched slightly, but he resolutely ignored the sudden ice that had speared his heart and shrugged good naturedly. "If that's the case, then feel free to start calling me Bucky. I'll probably respond better to it than 'friend Barnes'." He paused at the look on Thor's face before continuing hesitantly. "And, uh, it's shorter."

Thor beamed at him as he popped the pink things into the toaster and shoved them down into the heating coils. "Friend Bucky it is!" The Asgardian appeared to have a sudden thought occur to him, and he rapidly glanced between the toaster and Bucky with a slowly falling expression. He sounded devastated when he spoke next. "But I have done wrong! Forgive me, friend Bucky!"

Bucky couldn't quite keep the amusement off of his face. The choice to wander tonight had been one of the best ones he'd made all week.

"And what exactly have you done wrong, 'friend Thor?'"

Thor apparently didn't notice the amused use of the title as he stared deploringly at Bucky. "I have not extended an invitation to you to partake in my meager meal. Please, do not think unkindly of me for my mistake."

Bucky couldn't help it.

He laughed.

The sound was still foreign to his own ears, but the feeling was just too damn good to stop. At the sight of Thor's stricken face, however, he reigned in his control and spluttered out the noise to respond. "I won't think 'unkindly' of you, Thor, don't worry. I'm fine, really." The relief that crossed Thor's face wasn't quick enough to appease him, so he hastily drew the god's attention away from the conversation by nodding to the slightly smoking toaster. "What are they, anyways?"

Thor looked slightly more mollified as he turned to his ministrations. "They are a Midgardian delicacy known as 'Pop-Tarts.'" He looked slightly sheepish as he looked back to Bucky. "I am afraid I have grown quite fond of them in the time I have spent here. They are truly delicious."

Bucky pulled is mouth into an understanding frown as he nodded resolutely. The smell filling the kitchen was sickeningly sweet and had a hint of burnt strawberries to it that had him wrinkling his nose. "Pop-Tarts, huh? What exactly are they?"

Thor was silent for a moment before shrugging lightly as the pink pastries jumped from the toaster, the edges slightly singed. "I am not certain, but they rival even the taste of ambrosia."

Bucky watched silently as the Asgardian tugged open the industrial sized refrigerator to snatch a small tub of something. When he opened it and produced a small knife from one of the millions of unnecessary drawers in the kitchen, Bucky belatedly realized it was butter. He watched as Thor carefully spread a pat of butter on each pastry before placing the tub back in the enormous fridge. Bucky found his eyes riveted on the melting butter, and suddenly, the smell didn't seem quite so repulsive to him. As Thor wandered back over to the counter, he glanced up from the steaming pastries.

"Uh… hey, listen…"

Thor glanced at him, his eyebrows raised as he waited for the man at the counter to continue. Bucky cleared his throat before gesturing to the pop tarts.

"Got any more of those?"

Bucky had never seen anyone smile quite as wide as Thor did that day.

It wasn't until several hours and five slightly burnt pop tarts later when he was seated on one of the many chairs in the living area with the Asgardian watching the sun rise over the city that he realized he had not once been plagued by his memories during the course of the night.

For the first time in a long time, he felt slightly more at peace with himself.


	3. In Soviet Russia, Breakfast Makes You

The next Avenger he met was a thoroughly unexpected, highly unpleasant accident.

He had taken to wandering the floors of the tower at night in lieu of sleeping (with Jarvis as his reluctant guide), and in the time he had been exploring, he had discovered just about every nuance on every floor. There were three separate gyms bigger than most houses he knew of on three of the lower floors, an armory that stretched from one side of the building clear to the other, a library consisting of an eclectic mix of physical books and electronic tablets, and a smattering of conference rooms and apartments the higher he went. He didn't explore those as much, as he figured it was better to respect Steve's team's privacy. By the end of the first week, he had memorized most of the tower's layout.

Except, of course, the lowest levels.

Jarvis, despite the gradually growing sense of tolerance that had begun to form during the nightly treks between the two of them, had blatantly refused to allow him down to the labs where the elusive Tony Stark apparently was. When Bucky had questioned him as to why, the only answer he had received was that "Mr. Stark was busy with preparations for a new floor addition.

Bucky knew bullshit when he heard it. But, for the sake of staying in Jarvis' relative good books, he didn't press the issue.

He had gotten on the elevator on this particular day to go down to the main kitchen where Steve had sent a "request for his presence" through Jarvis. The sudden interruption of the AI's voice in his apartment had actually startled him into dropping the book he was staring blankly into on his foot, and the twinge from where it had hit was still running through his toes as he shifted his arm out of the way of the lift's doors. Jarvis had given him a halfhearted apology with no small degree of amusement.

If the robot was this insensitive, Bucky wasn't entirely sure he wanted to meet the man behind its creation.

Picking lightly at a loose strand on the deep green flannel he had chosen, he stood impatiently in the elevator as he descended. There was a certain… _wrong_ feel to clothes nowadays that he just hadn't gotten used to as of yet, and while the rolled sleeves _looked _right to him, they were much lighter in weight than he had expected. He shifted slightly as he dutifully turned his focus away from the deceptively thin shirt, the denim pants he had chosen for the day rustling with the movement.

All in all, he was still fairly uncomfortable.

The door opened to the main floor and apparent communal kitchen where he had only just met Thor a few nights earlier. He felt an almost imperceptible twinge of amusement at the memory of Steve's face when he had walked into the room at five thirty that morning to find the two of them seated on the couch with crumb covered plates and the hammer Thor called "Mjolnir" resting haphazardly on the coffee table in front of them.

He was lost in the thought when he rounded the corner leading to the bar, and in the future, he was certain that that was the reason he had not noticed the next Avenger.

He ran solidly into someone's back as he made his way around the thin wall of the small hallway, and before he could so much as give a muttered apology, he found something gripping his arms and flipping him solidly to the floor. He landed on his back with a pained _whoosh _and blinked up at his accoster, his muscles already tensing to retaliate. His brain started filing away what strengths and weaknesses he had felt in the one move alone, and as he moved to push himself back up and engage, he heard Steve's shocked voice.

"Natasha, what are you doing?"

He froze then, his palms planted solidly on the floor above his head as he blinked past the adrenaline fueled haze that had covered his vision. When it cleared, he saw a wild eyed woman standing above him, her dark red hair drifting lightly around her face as she glared down at him with an animosity that left him reeling. Her face registered dimly in his mind, and a vague picture of her sprinting from a smoking, battle scarred highway flashed through his mind. He couldn't quite push the memory away this time, and he lost himself to it as Steve's berating faded into nothing.

_It was a perfect shot._

_The target spun out, slamming into a car as she gripped her shoulder. He saw her eyes for only a short second, but what he saw ran a twinge of grim satisfaction through him._

_She was scared._

_The target disappeared behind a car, and he slowed his stalking, eyes roving over the mess of the road in search for an alternate opening. His gaze landed on an abandoned car, the roof just barely tall enough to offer any extra height. With lethal precision, he checked his gun and calculated the angles within seconds of his eyes landing on the possible perch._

_It would work._

_Then he was jogging, and leaping, and sure enough the target was looking in the other direction, expecting him to come from the other side, and he had the shot, all he had to do was pull the trigger-_

_But then the moment was gone_ _._

_The man had come running at him from his blind spot, and he turned just in time to slam his fist against the multicolored shield being shoved up at his torso. His fist connected solidly with the star in the center of the ludicrous thing, and the sight sparked something in him._

_He shoved the spark aside along with the man's shield_ _before hefting his gun and aiming squarely for the man's determined face._

_He had work to do._

A hand suddenly appeared beneath his nose and overtook the fuzzy images he had been sluggishly following, and Bucky squinted at it in confusion as he was forcefully pulled out of his flashback. He followed the arm up to it's owner, and was surprised to find the woman extending her hand to him. Her face was carefully blank, but her eyes held the slightest hint of bitter resentment in them.

He didn't take the hand.

Pushing himself back to his feet, he rolled his shoulders with a solid _crack, _his arm clicking back into place somewhat painfully as he shook his head to clear it. Steve was standing in the kitchen, his expression baffled as he stared at Natasha. She shrugged back to him, her voice deep and even.

"He surprised me."

Steve didn't quite look like he believed her, but he let it slide as he turned to scrutinize Bucky. "You alright?"

Bucky nodded slowly, but Steve didn't look convinced. He grunted slightly as he eyed Natasha, who eyed him right back. "Yeah, I'm good." He looked at Natasha for another long, tense moment before throwing all caution to the wind and exhaling deeply. Strangely, the first ice breaker that came to mind was Sam's comment from when he had been reintroduced to him. He wasn't sure what it meant, but it had done the trick to ease the tension then. He only hoped it would do it now. Natasha was looking at him, a tiny crease between her eyebrows the only thing belaying her unease. He rolled his shoulders again with a grimace before speaking haltingly.

"I'm guessing you've never skipped arm day."

She blinked at him, her shaped brows soaring to her hairline as Steve choked on the water he had been distractedly drinking. He spluttered wetly in their peripherals as Natasha regarded Bucky curiously, the unease draining from her face at an agonizingly slow pace.

After another long moment of Steve hacking up a lung in the background, she finally broke the mask she had set so firmly in place. Her lips quirked up in the corners, the barest hint of a smile as she crossed her arms and leaned back against the countertop. Her voice was still low, but her tone was tinged with amusement instead of the thinly veiled distrust it had held earlier.

"No. No, I didn't."

He heaved a barely perceptible sigh at the response, relief sweeping over him in an enormous wave that caught him slightly off guard. The last thing he needed was an enemy on Steve's team, and thankfully, it didn't appear that Natasha would prove to be one. At least, not right off the bat, that was.

He'd have to work on apologizing to her someday.

He turned his attention back to Steve to take some of the focus off of him, and he felt a tug of remorse in his gut at the continued coughing in the kitchen. When he spoke, his voice was entirely toneless. He only wished it was on purpose.

"You need a hand, or would you prefer to choke in peace?"

Steve waved him off with a glare as he sucked in a harsh breath. "Oh, I'm sorry, was I disturbing you?" His voice was strained from the abuse his throat had taken, and Bucky couldn't keep in a short, half hearted laugh at the baleful look he shot him.

He was surprised at how easy it was becoming to do that these last few days.

Bucky wandered aimlessly into the kitchen as the hacking finally subsided, and after a moment of mentally debating with himself, he eased open the gleaming refrigerator as Steve mumbled something incoherent behind him. He scanned the shelves dutifully, but his focus was zeroed entirely in on the eyes he knew were watching him from behind. It had been a week since he had been taken in to the tower, and Steve still hadn't stopped staring at him like he might break into pieces right in front of him at any given moment. While it was a nice feeling to have someone actually care if he was stable for once, it was starting to slowly get on his nerves.

He wasn't made of glass, after all.

The light hearted moments Bucky had were few and far between still, but they were slowly becoming less forced. All the same, that 2 a.m conversation with Thor had seemed to be the only solid conversation he had yet to have that wasn't overshadowed with some sense of horrible guilt or dread or suspicion. As it was, the tension he had just broken had already dissipated into an awkward silence.

Steve cleared his throat loudly, and Bucky threw a glance over is shoulder at him, his face carefully schooled. Natasha was watching him openly as well, and he couldn't quite keep himself from shifting under her blank stare.

Damn, that was unnerving.

Steve was gesturing to the nine burner gas stovetop on the lower counter beneath the bar. A pan of what looked like scrambled eggs was already simmering lightly on one of the prongs, and a cutting board with a thick slab of prepped bacon on it was sitting on the counter next to the range, an empty frying pan lying in wait beside it.

"I didn't just invite you down here to socialize, Buck, I'm already making breakfast. Sit tight for a few minutes, okay?"

Bucky eyed him for a moment before shutting the fridge door solidly, the rattle of the bottles inside the door a little louder than he had intended. He moved back to the outside of the counter to reclaim his stool from the few nights before and settled in to watch Steve go back to cooking. Natasha snagged the seat next to his, and the trio spent a few impossibly long minutes in silence.

This time, Natasha was the one to break it.

"That's a Soviet star."

Steve tensed noticeably at the statement, and it took a few seconds for Bucky to realize the question was directed at him as he watched Steve curiously. He looked to Natasha with a jolt, who in turn was looking at his prosthetic arm. He followed her gaze, his eyes locking on the grotesquely red, five pointed star plastered across what would be his bicep. The sight still made him slightly sick to his stomach. As it was, the sight of Natasha's inquiring face was overlaid with quick, merciless flashes of a laboratory and hellish equipment that should never have existed, and the smell of eggs and bacon was replaced by the stinging scent of antiseptic and tangy iron.

He pulled himself harshly from his "dead zone", as he'd taken to calling his frequent, morbid zone outs, and felt slightly proud that he had managed it on his own. As he shut his eyes to expel the last of the images and let the sensations of the kitchen come swamping back over him, he banished the memory to the corners of his mind to be dealt with later.

He kept telling himself that.

Later. He'd always deal with it later. Just not _now. _

There would be one hell of a 'later' to deal with eventually.

He opened his eyes when the smell of greasy food replaced the horrible smell of the laboratory, and what he saw didn't entirely surprise him.

Natasha was looking at him expectantly, her face neutral and her eyes blank as she regarded him with a quirked brow.

Steve was letting the eggs burn as he stared at his friend with a worried furrow in his brow.

Bucky told him as such without breaking eye contact with Natasha, and Steve turned back to his cooking with a very un-patriotic curse. Bucky ignored him and settled for leaning further against his arms as his eyes travelled back down to his star. He spoke with a sigh, his voice weary and sorely failing at achieving the light tone he hd been aiming for.

"Yeah. It is. Guess they just wanted to... add some _pizzazz_." The bitterness in his voice didn't surprise him as much as he would have expected. He paused for a moment before nodding his head to Natasha slowly, his brain running rapidly through what little information Steve had told him about the Russian assassin. "You know it well, I'm assuming."

She tensed at that, and he had just begun to mentally kick himself when she let herself relax. She appeared to have reached some sort of compromise as she leaned further against the counter as well, he chin resting lightly on her palm.

Painful reminder for painful reminder, it would appear.

"I know it," she said slowly, her eyes sliding back to watch Steve place a new slab of bacon into the pan, the hissing and popping of the grease growing exponentially louder in the thick silence. Her voice was slightly bitter when she spoke again. "They just can't help but mark what they've made, can they?"

Realization swarmed over him then, and with a suddenness that left him reeling, he saw the assassin before him in a whole new light. He stared into her eyes in earnest, his own gaze searching. There was a careful measure of confidence in her eyes, but it was all but overtaken with the deadness of what he assumed were the memories she was silently sorting through.

He wasn't the only one who had done some damn deplorable things as someone else's work.

The thought created a splintering crack in the thick wall he had shakily built around his mind in a cold cabin in the hills of Tennessee, and he could have sworn he saw sunlight filtering through the webbed fractures as the foreign feeling of relief swept over him.

It took him a minute to call himself an idiot for "seeing" something that didn't physically exist.

And yet, the metaphor eased some of the despair he had been feeling, and the odd numbness he had felt when talking with Thor crept over him warmly.

Natasha was speaking to Steve again, obviously trying to change the subject.

"Who knew you had cooking chops, old man?"

Steve shot her a look, his eyes hooded as he stared pointedly back into her face. "Everyone who's ever known me for more than a month." At her disbelieving expression, he jabbed a thumb in Bucky's direction. "Just ask him. He was my critic when we were growing up. Got a lot of free meals that way, pal."

Bucky settled his chin in his palm, nodding benignly when Natasha turned her focus back onto him. "Kid made one hell of a stew." He slid his elbows off of the counter when Steve settled a plate of steaming eggs and bacon in front of him. He nodded his thanks as he picked up a still sizzling piece of the bacon and took an enormous, crispy bite.

He hadn't realized just how hungry he'd actually been.

Natasha's eyebrows rose as she turned back to accept a plate from Steve as well. "Well. Who knew. Captain America, poster child of domesticity."

She almost didn't duck in time for the dish towel Steve threw at her to go soaring over her head.


	4. Tock

**A/N: Bit of a longer chapter for you here! Be warned, here thar be angst and hurt/comfort.**

**Special thanks to my reviewers and followers! **

* * *

><p>The "later" he had been promising himself for dealing with all of his thoughts came much sooner than he would have liked.<p>

In all reality, he would have liked if it never came.

But, despite his hopes, it did, and it crashed over him with a turbulent velocity that left him staggering.

He had been standing in front of the sleek mounted screen in his room, mindlessly debating on asking Jarvis how to work it, when his focus slipped entirely from the apartment surrounding him and dove deep into his mind, wave after wave after wave of flashing images pouring over his vision mercilessly as he was betrayed by his own brain. His head felt like it had been rammed by a train as explosions of impossibly bright color burst in front of his eyes, and he dimly noted he was gripping his hair hard enough to yank it straight from his skull as pain prickled his skin.

His knees collided harshly with the floor as he grit his teeth against a yell of agony, and before he could try to desperately shove all of the raging emotions back into their place, he went under.

_Anguish. Absolute anguish. Fear. Desperation. Freezing, burning at the same time. Shades of deep red, so dark, impossibly dark. So red they were almost purple, stark against the pristine white of the snow. It was puddled around him, and it was burning him, burning, no freezing, it was freezing, he could't feel anymore, he couldn't, it had to stop-_

_Faces. Names. No no no no, they couldn't be here, he had to get away, had to escape. Words, useless words, he couldn't tell what they meant. Didn't they know he couldn't hear them? He was already dead, he was certain of it. He felt it. He was numb, so numb, but he wasn't, he was in agony. Every cell was being tortured, every breath sending spasms of pain through his very core. He heard screaming, and he knew it couldn't have possibly come from him, because he was dead. He had to be dead. He knew he was dead. He had fallen. He'd fallen, down, and down, and down, and down, and it had hurt, oh god it had hurt-_

_There was a haze of nothing for the longest time, and then the agony escalated tenfold, and every nerve in his body was screaming, and he couldn't make it stop, he couldn't, and he never believed he would have wanted to die as much as he did then. Something was wrong, so incredibly wrong, he couldn't feel his arm, what did they do to his arm, why was it so numb? He needed to move, he had to leave, someone was restraining him, and someone was screaming, shouting, growling, and then there was a sharp pain to his neck and then nothing._

_Cold metal glided smoothly over his shoulder, and he thought it was wrong somehow, but he didn't question it. He couldn't question it. He had a job to do. He had targets. Contracts. Missions. Orders. Obey the orders, just obey the orders, don't ask too many questions, they'll hurt you. He wasn't so sure that was a bad thing, though. He needed to feel._

_He needed to feel._

_Fire and heat. Rattling gunfire and silence. Explosions ripping lives apart, tearing them from their future. Leaving nothing but ash, nothing behind. It's what he did. And damn, he did it well._

_A mission. A result. Freezing cold and nothing. Heat. A mission. A result. Freezing cold and nothing. Heat._

_A mission._

_But he knew him._

_The man from the bridge- Steve, something inside of him had tried to scream out desperately. The man's stricken face when he saw what he had become. The give of his flesh as he punched him, over and over and over, because he was his mission, and missions needed results-_

_Steve's face, bloody and bruised and broken by his hand._

_And he fell._

_Guilt. Overwhelming, all encompassing guilt._

_So many were dead because of him. He'd killed too many, snuffed them out like flames. And Steve. Steve. His best friend. He almost killed his best friend. So much guilt. Too much guilt, too much, he had to get away, had to make it stop, had to get away, oh god, what had he done-_

"Sergeant Barnes."

_Nonononono that wasn't him anymore, stop it, he was a monster-_

"Sergeant Barnes, shall I alert Captain Rogers?"

Jarvis' low voice broke into his thoughts, and Bucky rose from the unexpected attack with a dry sob. He dimly realized he was curled on his side, his knees drawn taught to his chin and his hands fisted painfully in his hair. The AI spoke again calmly, and Bucky latched on to the voice like it was a lifeline.

"I can send for him immed-"

"No!" Bucky surprised himself with the vehement outburst, his voice strangled. With more effort than he would have liked, he unclenched his muscles, uncurling from his embarrassing fetal position and sitting up to lean against the edge of the couch as he sucked in a ragged breath. "No," he repeated, the word slightly stronger now that he could actually breathe. He tilted his head back to rest it against the couch as the sound of his breathing grew slightly more steady. He was still gasping, but the noise wasn't overwhelming his senses now. Jarvis was suspiciously quiet, and Bucky's muscles froze up again.

"Did you call him? Jarvis, don't call him, please-"

The AI interrupted his frantic plea, his tone oddly soothing. "I have not, Sergeant Barnes. Although I highly suggest it-"

Bucky shook his head hard enough to rekindle the explosive migraine that had started just before the attack. "I can't. I can't see him right now, I can't." He couldn't stop the stream of words, and before he knew it, he was babbling senselessly to the ceiling. "You don't understand, I could have killed him. So many times, I came so close, and I never would've known. I wouldn't have known. I would've kept killing, kept obeying, and I never would've known. His face, Jarvis. I can still see… I can… I can't, Jarvis, please. I can't do it right now. I can't, please, I can't…" He trailed off pathetically, the last stream of "can't"s ending in a whisper.

The sudden silence in the room closed in on him, and he was unsurprised to find his face wet from overwhelmed tears. He swiped them away distractedly, his ears straining for a response from the AI as his heart hammered rapidly against his ribs.

He had almost convinced himself Jarvis would ignore everything he said and call Steve anyways when the accented voice reappeared, the tone low and calm.

"May I suggest… the gym, then, sir. The thirty fourth floor is currently unoccupied, and the equipment is of the highest grade." There was a pause as he seemingly let that sink in. Then, he followed up with something that genuinely confused Bucky. "Mister Stark has just used it earlier this morning for testing. He… 'blew off some steam', as it were, and the floor was still intact. I doubt any damage could be done."

Bucky sat in silence for a moment, his body still as he processed just what Jarvis was suggesting. He scrubbed a hand over his face, wiping the last of the moisture away as he leaned against the couch to lever himself into a standing position. He nodded slowly before tilting his head back to address Jarvis in full, his voice steadier as he poured as much conviction as he could into his next words. He didn't have to try too hard, as they were well and truly genuine.

"Thank you."

Jarvis was silent.

* * *

><p>And so Bucky found himself laying flat on the weight bench of the eerily quiet gymnasium, his arms working furiously to lift the free weight over his chest as his shirt clung to the sweat on his torso. He had stood for a long time at the entrance of the enormous room, his eyes roving over the equipment (and curiously taking in the charred remains of a pile of boxing dummies)before settling on the solid bench and the pile of weights beside it. It hadn't taken him long to stack on the heaviest of the weights and start lifting, his mind drifting into a hypnotic rhythm of the lift that was infinitely better than the chaos that had just exploded in his mind only minutes before.<p>

He was recovering from the initial attack slowly, but surely.

Which of course meant round two was bound to happen sooner rather than later.

It all went to hell when some idiotic part of his mind decided to vent the tension of his muscles into a punching bag.

There was already a weighted bag dangling from a hook on the ceiling in the corner, and as Bucky wandered quietly over to it, he could feel his arms and shoulders tightening in preparation. Each step forward brought some new, tiny change in him, and by the time he was standing in front of the bag, he was coiled for attack.

He lashed out furiously, his flesh hand striking the bag with a satisfying thud.

The lack of any mental reaction to the feeling spurred him on, and he danced back away from the swinging bag lightly, his feet silent as they barely skimmed over the mats. He bobbed as he moved, his fists held high as he jabbed here and there, testing the bag's limits. After a minute or so of simple weaving and striking, he decided to test Jarvis' statement of the durability of the equipment and swung wildly with his prosthetic, locking the joints and adding as much extra force as he could to the hydraulics. His curled fist hit the bag solidly and sent it flying wildly into the air-

-but the chain did not break, and the bag swung back to smack him neatly in the face.

He stumbled back slightly, rubbing his smarting jaw as he eyed the bag appreciatively. Jarvis hadn't been kidding.

With the durability of the bag confirmed, Bucky rolled his shoulders and sucked in a deep breath.

Then, he released all of the hell he had been living for the past fifty years on the miserable sack of sand.

His fists and feet flew with lightning speed, his arms practically a blur as he spun and ducked around the wildly swinging bag. He held no force in, choosing instead to vent all of the emotion, all of the guilt, all of the pain and suffering and resentment into the bag. Each solid hit dispersed an emotion, and he pulled his mouth into a grim line of satisfaction as sweat broke out on his face and he fell into a hypnotic pattern of carnage.

Duck. Weave. Right hook. Uppercut. Block. Jab. Jab. Jab. Roundhouse. Duck. Weave. Left hook. Uppercut. Block. Jab. Jab. Jab. Roundhouse. Duck. Weave.

Right hook.

Uppercut.

_Right hook._

_"Then finish it."_

_Pull back for a left hook._

_Pause._

_"'Cause I'm with you to the end of the line."_

And there was Steve's face, broken and bloody and resigned. His friend. His brother. Practically dead on the sand.

Because of him.

Bucky let loose a hoarse yell as he flung his flesh fist at the bag with more force than he thought possible, and he heard a sickening crack that reverberated up his arm. He ignored it, his teeth grit against the sudden flare of pain. The bag spun wildly, but it wasn't enough for him. He needed to see it in pieces. He had to do something, had to get everything out, had to vent it, it was destroying him—

He pulled back his prosthetic, ignoring the creaks and groans it gave as he locked the joints in place and shoved as much power into the thrust as he could. He let the fist fly straight and true, and it rammed into the bag with an enormous slam that echoed off of the cold walls of the empty gymnasium.

The chain didn't break.

But the bag did.

The canvas exploded, sand spilling out onto the floor in slowly growing heaps as Bucky sank to the ground beside it, his face buried in shaking hands. He sat like that for a long while, just listening to the soft hissing of the sand escaping the bag and shutting his eyes tightly, as if maybe he could just block out everything that had happened and pass it off as a really, really intricate, detailed bad dream.

Right.

God, he was such a child.

It wasn't until after the bag was well and truly empty that Bucky became aware of the stinging on the back of his hand. He pulled them both away from his face and rotated his flesh hand to find the source of the throbbing ache. He was vaguely surprised to find his knuckles a mass of slowly swelling, viscously bleeding gouges, his thumb dangling at an angle that definitely didn't look right to him. He stared down at them momentarily before a slightly hysterical laugh bubbled up from his chest.

And suddenly, he couldn't stop.

He laughed until tears streamed down his face and his sides felt like they were on fire. He laughed until his throat went raw and his voice ran hoarse, and even then, he kept laughing. He laughed until he sobbed, and he knew Jarvis was watching, but he couldn't bring himself to give a damn.

He laughed more than he had in his combined week at the tower, and he hated himself for it.

It took a long while for him to regain his composure and trail off with a long whoosh of a hysterical, wavering giggle, and when he did, he felt more drained than he ever had after any mission.

Well, maybe not that mission.

When he finally found it in himself to scrub a hand over his face and stand, he made his way slowly back to the elevator. He stepped into the small space somewhat guiltily as he realized he would have to exchange words with Jarvis, and as the doors closed, he spoke quietly.

"Not quite as durable as you thought it was."

There was a moment of silence before Jarvis responded with a short, neutral "so it would seem."

Bucky found himself starting to appreciate the AI a bit more than he had initially.

He didn't sound too peeved, so Bucky let the matter drop. He ran his hand over his face wearily, wincing at the pull on the gashes and what was undoubtedly a broken thumb. He'd need to address that.

Or maybe he wouldn't.

Maybe he'd just go pass out and never leave his bed again.

He found himself speaking without fully meaning to, the words directed at the ceiling of the elevator. "Where's the first aid equipment, Jarvis?"

God, did he really sound that wrecked?

Jarvis' voice broke through his sluggish disgust, and he blinked as he strained to listen. "There is a first aid kit located inside the cabinet over the sink in every bathroom of the tower." There was a pause before the AI continued slowly. "Shall I call a doctor for you? I can recommend four in the immediate area who are sworn to silence."

Bucky was quiet for a brief moment before he shook his head slowly and scrubbed a hand over his face.

"Just…take me to my floor," he ordered, his voice toneless. The sooner he got back to his room, the sooner he could sort through his miserable life one disaster at a time. The elevator bobbed slightly before it began its ascent smoothly without a word from the operator.

Bucky wasn't sure if he appreciated or resented that.

The doors slid open much sooner than he had expected them to, and he stepped out distractedly as he tried to remember just which level his floor was actually on. He hadn't really taken the initiative to remember. It wasn't until the smell of incense and a muffled noise that sounded suspiciously like running water filtered through his awareness that he finally looked up from his tattered hand. He stopped in his tracks and blinked dully in confusion at the sight before him.

This wasn't the floor he shared with Steve.

This was someone else's floor entirely, and by the looks of it, the occupant wasn't too far away.

The short hallway that acted as the entrance tapered off into a small area that looked like a makeshift workspace of some sort, a stack of clipped papers and a ridiculously thick book balanced on the edge of a sleek counter alongside what looked like an incredibly high tech microscope of some sort that easily took up half of the desk. A small kitchenette wrapped around a pillar in the center of the room, and the candle giving off the tangy smell Bucky had only just noticed was the only object visible on the immaculate countertop.

Bucky had just opened his mouth to ask Jarvis why he had dropped him here when the inhabitant of the floor rounded the corner from the door leading to what had to be the main apartment.

The man froze in surprise at the sight of Bucky standing frozen with his hand cradled in the doorway, and the two stood staring awkwardly at each other for a long moment as Bucky's eyes rapidly scanned over the man's greying hair and thin glasses.

He had to be Banner.

Bruce Banner regarded him calmly, the slight raise of his eyebrows the only indicator that he was shocked to see a strange man standing in his apartment. The scientist stepped forward, lowering the book he had held in his hands as he did so. His expression was cautious as his eyes glanced around what little space was behind Bucky. He appeared to be more confused than anything, and Bucky found himself silently thanking whatever bit of dust remained of his lucky stars for that.

He did not want to meet his infamous alter ego right now.

When Banner spoke, his voice was light and slow. Bucky didn't miss the hint of suspicion layered beneath the easygoing tone, however.

"Can I, ah, help you?"

Bucky just blinked at the man as his hand throbbed, and suddenly, the pieces clicked into place.

His hand. He had mumbled in the elevator when he had been debating on what to do about it. And if what Steve had told him was true, then Banner was a certified doctor.

Jarvis had taken the initiative to fix it for him.

Sneaky bastard.

He started as he realized Bruce was still staring at him, his eyebrows furrowing deeper and deeper as he stood expectantly waiting for an answer. Bucky glanced down at his shredded hand awkwardly, tilting it so it wouldn't drip blood onto the man's carpet. That wouldn't make the greatest of first impressions. He almost started giggling like the madman he was at the thought, but he resolutely shoved past the urge and cleared his throat instead to anchor himself. When he spoke, his voice was scratchy and rough, and he was mildly surprised at the pathetic sound. Had he really been that hysterical?

""Steve… said you were a doctor?"

Bruce narrowed his eyes at that, his spine straightening considerably at the statement. His eyes roved over Bucky rapidly then, and after a long second of him searching from the sluggishly bleeding hand back up to the prosthetic arm, his expression cleared as realization dawned on him. He straightened his glasses as he stood even taller, a sad grin appearing on his face and catching Bucky off guard as he spoke softly.

"You're Bucky."

Hearing the nickname from a man like Banner was definitely odd, but he nodded anyways. He didn't quite trust himself to speak much.

Bruce's eyes softened considerably then, his face morphing into a gentler expression. With an extended hand, he beckoned him into the doorway he had just exited. He shut his book quietly and disappeared back into the room himself before Bucky could so much as blink.

Without much of a choice, Bucky followed with no small amount of hesitation.

Despite the late hour, the lights were on in the little living area, dimmed to a comfortable tone of watery orange. Bucky's ears perked up as a whisper of sound registered, and he dimly realized there was some sort of quiet music playing. It was oddly soothing, all flutes and some string instrument he couldn't place. Warm, oaky browns and deep emerald tones dominated the area, as a collection of large leafy plants practically swallowed one corner of the little living room opposite an enormous bookcase full to bursting with thick volumes. A sudden small tock noise drew his attention to the center of the room, and his eyes landed on a small fountain perched on the center of the low table set in front of a plush three seater couch. The wooden pipe in the fountain filled with water again, and the end dipped down to hit the base of the rocks it was set on with another quiet tock before it tilted back again. Bucky watched it fill and empty for another few revolutions, unintentionally mesmerized.

"It's a shishi-odoshi."

Bruce's voice startled him out of his reverie, and he tore his gaze away from the fountain to regard the doctor questioningly. He was standing in the doorway to what Bucky assumed was the bathroom, as his sleeves were rolled past his elbows and a wet washcloth was dangling from his hand. At Bucky's look, Bruce nodded to the fountain.

"A Japanese water fountain. They're a scarecrow, of sorts. For gardens. The noise scares away animals." He paused then as he watched the fountain complete a rotation. "I find them more relaxing than frightening. The repetition is…" He searched for a word for a short while before settling on "…nice, to have. Too much changes around here."

Bucky listened with half an ear, nodding numbly at the end of the doctor's explanation. He had seen the type of fountain before, many times in his previous life.

He'd killed a man in Brussels who had an entire room dedicated to an immaculate zen garden.

The authorities had found him with a bullet to the back and his head submerged in the water.

Tock.

Bucky forced himself to shake the image off, but he failed to be subtle about the effort it took. His breath shook audibly as he inhaled with a deep rattle, and Bruce regarded him with a more professionally apprehensive expression from across the room. He strode forward with the washcloth then, motioning for Bucky to take a seat on the couch as he did so. He flopped more than sat, and his prosthetic hand found it's way to his face without him prompting it. With a solid pinch to the bridge of his nose, he grounded himself as best he could. He couldn't have another attack in front of someone else.

Especially someone like Banner.

A sharp pain in his hand had him sucking in a rapid breath, and his eyes flew open to see Bruce sitting on the edge of a desk chair he must have pulled up in front of to him, his brow furrowed and his eyes inspecting the gashes with a meticulous professionalism that Bucky rarely even saw in most military doctors. He held the injured hand lightly in one palm, turning it this way and that with a slow precision as he dabbed away the clotted blood with the washcloth. Bucky watched in grotesque fascination as the white of the cloth ran red within minutes. Something dimly registered in his sluggish mind then, and he found himself blurting out words before he could stop himself.

"I'm sorry."

Bruce glanced up to his face, his eyes settling on Bucky's reverted gaze as he raised a brow. He was silent for a long moment before returning to his ministrations. His voice was quietly inviting. Open.

Genuine.

"No 'you should see the other guy'?"

Tock.

Bucky shifted uncomfortably at the doctor's light inquiry, the attempt at humor not going over his head. He was surprised to find he was grateful for the effort. Without fully realizing what he was doing, he found himself responding huskily.

"The… 'other guy' was a canvas sack that used to be filled with dirt."

Bruce glanced up. "Used to?"

Bucky just shrugged half heartedly and made a loose gesture towards the hand resting on the doctor's palm. Banner gave a long, slow nod of acknowledgment.

He stared down at the hand in question as the doctor inspected the busted thumb, the pain barely registering as his mind was gradually mobbed by the whirlwind of guilt he had felt earlier. He remained silent, and after a few minutes, Bruce glanced back up at him, his expression resigned and understanding. He stood from his seat then, the saturated washcloth hanging lightly over his forearm. He inhaled deeply as he caught Bucky's tired eyes.

"The scratches are superficial; they shouldn't take too long to heal. There's one that's going to need some stitching, though. I don't like how deep it is. It feels like you fractured your thumb at the base, but I can't be sure without a solid radiograph. I don't think that'll be necessary though, it feels unmistakably like an extraarticular break. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say it's transverse, too. Not too bad of angle, so it shouldn't be hard to treat." He paused, regarding Bucky, who was staring at the floor in earnest. When he continued, his voice was low. "It could've been much worse than what it is. We can work with this."

Bucky nodded numbly.

He doubted they were talking about his thumb anymore.

Bruce was quiet for another moment before he disappeared back into the bathroom, the distant sound of opening cabinets reaching Bucky through what felt like ten pounds of cotton. He'd started to block out the doctor about halfway through his explanation as a paralyzing feeling of fear had begun to sweep over him. All of his focus was reigned in on the inside of his mind as he shut his eyes tightly, mentally shoving the shadows away. They threatened to overwhelm him again, and he wouldn't let that happen. Couldn't let it happen. Not here, not now, not ever if he had the choice.

Tock.

He was so focused on breathing that he didn't notice Bruce reclaiming the seat in front of him with a small bottle of antiseptic and a package with a splint and a needle. The sting of the cloth he swept over the scratches didn't even register for him, and he kept his eyes resolutely shut for the fear of what he would find when he opened them.

He didn't know how long he stayed like that, his prosthetic fist clenched on the armrest and his muscles coiled so tight he knew he'd need one hell of a painkiller later. The battle in his mind refused to stop, but the longer he stayed in his thoughts, the more the shadows seemed to lessen. He had a handle on them. He could work through them.

He had to.

Steve's effort to save his useless hide couldn't be wasted.

A small tug on his hand prompted him to finally open his eyes, and he turned his face downwards to stare dumbly at the needle and thread the doctor had halfway through his skin. The gouge was more than halfway shut, and Bucky blinked at the small splint already attached to his thumb. He swiveled his head to stare numbly at the minimalistic clock Bruce had hanging from his wall above the plants.

Had it really already been twenty minutes?

He shot a slightly sheepish look to the doctor, but if Bruce noticed it, he made no sign of it. He gave one last, sharp tug at the stitch before snipping the thread and tying it off with an expert hand. He leaned back slightly, and at the glint of his glasses, something sparked inside Bucky's brain, and felt the pressure of another flashback pounding at the edges of his mind.

Tock.

And suddenly, Bucky was talking.

"I keep seeing their faces."

Banner looked up from the stitched hand to his face curiously at the quiet words, and he sat back slowly. After a moment, he gave an encouraging nod. Bucky inhaled deeply, already regretting his decision, but he plowed on anyways.

"The people I killed. The people I could have saved. Steve. Natasha." He furrowed his brow as a distant memory of sniping through a window resurfaced. "Someone I think might have been important to them both. To a lot of people. They're always there, and they just won't stop staring at me. I don't know how to make them stop. I can't make them stop. It's like… like they can't forget me, so they won't let me forget them." He stopped abruptly, the idiocy of what he was saying making his face flush. He soldiered on, though, and he couldn't stop his stammering no matter how hard he tried. "I caused all this… this pain, and I did so much that shouldn't ever be excusable, and now… now I'm back, and they expect me to heal. To heal. Like… like, like I scraped my knee or something and it'll just close right up on it's own. Like they didn't do anything to me. The things they did to me-"

He cut himself off when his throat suddenly closed in on itself, and he dropped his chin to rest heavily on his chest to avoid the doctor's gaze, his face flushed and his eyes prickling frustratingly.

A long moment of silence passed with the low thrum of the music being the only noise, and Bucky found himself fidgeting uncomfortably as the minutes stretched on with no comments from the doctor.

God, why did he say anything? He barely knew this man!

Tock.

The antiseptic wipe that was suddenly enveloping his hand lightly stung his skin, and Bucky glanced up as Bruce reached back silently for a roll of gauze at his feet. He watched tensely as he wrapped the entire gruesome package tightly with the bandages.

He sat staring at his dressed hand while Bruce stood to dispose of his tools. The steady tock from the fountain recaptured his attention, and he found himself glaring at the peaceful object as it refilled and emptied against the rocks.

Of course Banner returned just in time to see him eyeing it like it had personally spited him.

In a way, it had.

Bruce glanced between the fountain and Bucky before pulling the chair back away from the couch and sitting heavily in it once it was out of Bucky's personal comfort zone. The two stared at each other for another long moment, the tock in the background overtaking the sound of the music as it faded out.

When the silence finally grew to be too much, Bucky shifted from the couch and stood stiffly, his eyes glued to his hand as he addressed the doctor quietly.

"Thank you. For… I'll just…"

He trailed off lamely as words escaped him, and he glanced up to see Bruce staring at him serenely.

He turned on his heel to leave before he shamed himself any further, the sudden need to escape overwhelming him. He'd barely made it to the door when Banner's quiet voice froze him in his tracks.

"I couldn't look in a mirror for at least a year after… the other guy happened."

Bucky stared resolutely at the door, refusing to turn from his escape to face the man he'd just bared his soul to. Apparently taking this as a signal to continue, Banner kept talking.

"The memories were too fresh. Anything could set me off back then. It felt… like I was drowning, but there was a rope leading straight to the surface right next to me. I tried to grab it a couple of times." There was a pause. "Never tried to climb it, though."

Tock.

Bucky turned slowly then, his eyes riveted on Banner. The man was standing now, his hands in his pockets and an oddly haunted expression on his face. He wasn't really looking at Bucky. Rather, it seemed like he was looking through him. When he turned, however, the doctor's eyes refocused, and he regarded the man at his door with that sad grin of his.

"But I learned. It took me some time, but I learned." He tilted his head, his eyes never leaving Bucky's. "But then I got about halfway to the surface, and I stopped. I thought that was it, that was as far as I was getting. I couldn't go any higher, and I thought I was okay with that." He swept a flat hand out in front of him with a frown before tucking it back into its pocket. He rocked back on his heels slightly as he continued.

"And then I got a… house call, let's say. From SHIELD. And I let go of the rope. I lost it entirely, and I knew there was no finding it again."

Bucky turned to face the doctor in full, his curiosity winning out over his mortification. "But you're not…"

Bruce raised a slightly amused eyebrow. "Green?" At Bucky's horrified expression, he let out a huff of a chuckle. "It's okay, it takes more than that to offend me at this point. And no, I'm not green. Because I met someone who helped me figure out how to find the rope again and climb right past the middle to the top."

Bucky stared dumbly back at him as the seconds passed in silence.

Tock.

Banner inhaled deeply before letting it out in a heavy sigh. He took his hand from his pocket and ran it lightly over his face, his glasses pushing up over his hair as he did so.

"Look, I'm not very good at this. What I'm saying is, you can heal from anything. All it takes is some time and… the right kind of salve."

"Anything."

Bucky's voice startled him somewhat, and he looked surprised at the hesitant inquiry in his tone. Banner gave him a genuine, lopsided grin then, and he nodded with a resolute determination that Bucky didn't quite believe. He swiveled his gaze towards the floor, his metal fist clenched tightly.

He looked back up at the doctor as the music gently eased back into the room, and he nodded to himself before speaking quietly.

"Thank you."

He turned towards the door before he could say anything else he would regret, and as he stepped into the hallway and made his way towards the elevator, he sensed rather than heard the man following him. The voice that drifted out after him, however, surprised him.

"If you ever need a hand finding that rope… well, you know where I live."

Tock.

Bucky started before glancing over his shoulder. Banner was watching him with a slightly wry grin. Bucky just looked back at him for a long moment before turning to board the elevator.

He turned in time to see Bruce's smile through the closing doors turn back into the sad grin it had been before.

And some small bit of hope that had grown in Bucky's heart wavered.

It appeared not everything healed with treatment and time.

As the sudden silence filled the elevator, Bucky found himself leaning back against the wall, mentally and physically exhausted beyond his tolerance level. A sudden realization struck him as his thoughts swirled uneasily, and he cracked open an eye as he spoke with a weariness he knew he would be feeling for the rest of the week.

"Jarvis."

Silence.

Then,

"Yes, Sergeant Barnes?"

He shut his eye as the elevator began its upwards crawl.

"Thanks."

"You are most welcome."

The AI's tone was surprisingly warm, and Bucky almost grinned at the response.

Almost.


	5. All's Fair in Vents and Cola

**AN: One more chapter to go, guys! Thanks to all of my lovely reviewers (and an extra special shoutout to resfulsky5 for reviewing every chapter!) and followers alike! **

**If you have yet to get your complete Avenger's fill, feel free to head on over to my other story, "Drop and Cover." It concerns Clint's whereabouts during "The Winter Soldier," and lucky for you lot, it's already complete! I upload a chapter every Sunday, so keep an eye out for it.**

**Happy reading!**

* * *

><p>It was only a matter of time when he would have his next run in with the following member of the team. He just couldn't be sure if it would be Stark or Barton.<p>

He found out much sooner than he had expected.

Since his ashamedly awkward soul-bearing encounter with Bruce, Bucky had been lying low, avoiding Steve and the others when he could as he waited for his hand to heal and become less of a target for attention and the unwanted questions that would undoubtedly come with it. He gave himself that excuse each day, that he just didn't want Steve to worry about the hand, but in reality, he knew it was because Banner's words were still resonating in his mind a little too well.

He'd done well discovering most of the hiding spots the tower had to offer along the upper floors and behind the occasional odd door, and he'd managed to create an exit from just about every room he was bound to visit at some point during his stay. The amount of glossy sliding panels and extra rooms full of scrap and half built machinery was bordering on ridiculous, but Bucky wasn't about to complain about a blessing like the extra crawlspaces. Jarvis gave him fair warning when the other inhabitants of the tower were nearby, and for not the first time of those two short weeks, he was immensely grateful for the presence of the AI in the house. He was shocked at how quickly he had come to view Jarvis as a companion as opposed to the disembodied program he had first considered the voice to be.

Still, even with Jarvis' warnings, sometimes there was nowhere to slink away from the imminent encounters.

He'd been able to dodge Thor with relative ease. The big guy made enough noise when he walked to be heard a mile away, and he had a tendency to speak aimlessly with Jarvis as he made his way through the hallways. He wasn't a problem to easily avoid.

Natasha was a little trickier. Bucky had started to believe she had a sixth sense, as every time he slipped out of a room she was en route to on Jarvis' quiet suggestion, she would freeze in the doorway, her eyes darting this way and that as he watched carefully from behind a grate or in the security of the next room over. She almost always went about her business after that, but Bucky knew she knew he was nearby. How she knew, he didn't entirely want to know himself.

Bucky hadn't seen hide nor hair of Bruce since their little chat. The immense feeling of relief he got from that fact was a little startling to him.

He wouldn't have been too bothered if any of the others had found him, really. It was only Steve who he had been actively trying to avoid.

Which of course meant he was the one who came closest to cornering him.

Bucky was wandering aimlessly through the armory that day, his eyes roving unseeingly over the racks of miscellaneous weapons as the low humming of some oddly luminescent… thing buzzed in his ears. He'd noticed the sound the first night he had found the armory, and it gave him an almost pleasantly numb feeling as it droned on continuously. The stress and guilt had been threatening to overwhelm him again today, so he had made his way to the one floor he now knew could neutralize the feeling.

As he ran a hand lightly over a sniper rifle that looked suspiciously HYDRA-esque, something niggled anxiously at his mind. The droning hum was still resounding through the metal walls of the room uninterrupted, and he lifted his head, eyes narrowed suspiciously as his senses went on high alert.

Only seconds later, the long, low ding of the elevator doors opening pierced the stillness.

Bucky backpedaled rapidly, his shoulders brushing the wall without a sound as he searched desperately for a less conspicuous area to be standing in. There was the resonant thump of heavy footfalls, the owner hesitant and slow. The sound of the elevator doors closing with their distinct swoosh washed over the steps. Then, silence.

"Jarvis, are you sure he's here?"

Bucky's face fell, his eyes darkening at Steve's voice.

It would appear there was a limit to how long Jarvis was willing to not sell him out.

"Bucky?"

The split second flash of anger at the AI dissipated as quickly as it came. He couldn't be mad, really. He was supposed to be here to heal. In all actuality, he was surprised it had taken this long for Jarvis to rat him out.

He remained silent as Steve's footsteps echoed back through the room, his voice rising a level as he called his name. By the sound of the clicks, Steve was walking deeper into the room, opposite the direction Bucky was in. Bucky shut his eyes, mentally forcing himself to even his breathing before slowly, slowly inching his way along the wall towards the elevator's door and ducking behind a rack of foreign looking swords to conceal himself. He knew Steve would hear the doors opening, but it was the only exit he had for this room. He dimly noted that Jarvis hadn't pointed out his location to Steve yet, and a twinge of confusion ran through him. Why was he so silent?

The rack of swords suddenly merged with a much larger shelf of dense machinery, and Bucky stood with a cautious glance behind him. He would be shielded from the rest of the room until he came to the elevator.

He'd have to sprint for it.

Something glinted in the light over the rifle rack just ahead of him, and his eyes were drawn to the gleam despite themselves as he gently put his heel back on the floor from where it had been hovering in preparation to run. What he saw made his heart leap to his throat.

There was a sizable vent just over the rack of guns with what looked like standard bolts screwing it to the wall.

A vent.

How the hell did he miss a vent when he had mapped out the room?

He snapped himself out of his disbelief when Steve's voice suddenly rang back through the room, the tone low and concerned.

"Jarvis, where is he? You said he was on this floor."

Bucky didn't wait to hear the reply.

With all of the agility he had grudgingly become known for over the past fifty years, he leapt lightly for the rack, his feet connecting with the shelving with barely a sound. His hands worked furiously at the vent, and with the barest twinge of pain through his thumb, he pried the grating off with a tiny clang. He stood frozen for half a second, his ears straining past the buzzing that he was certain was now in his head. Jarvis had chosen that exact moment to reply to Steve, however, and the noise appeared to have been covered. Bucky hefted the grate into his metal hand as he silently thanked Jarvis, who appeared to be telling a very baffled Steve he had been mistaken. With another light leap and some careful maneuvering, he was well in the vent and pulling the opening shut.

The hum of the armory dwindled exponentially in the metal confines of the ventilation unit, and Bucky shifted further away from the grate with ease. He was well accustomed with crawlspaces, and it wasn't long before he found himself at a conjoining crossroads. He hooked a fast right and slid to a stop when he was certain he was well out of earshot of the armory, his breath still caught in his throat as he paused. His legs swung out underneath him as he lifted his body weight with his arms, and in seconds he was sitting against the wall of the ventilation shaft with his legs sprawled ungainly in front of him. An enormous, unbidden sigh of relief heaved out from his lungs, and he vaguely noted the sweat that had cooled on his face.

Had he really been that nervous?

The quiet of the vents was a welcome change, and he reveled in the stillness, his eyes closing as he gasped for breath.

That was, until, something thoroughly unexpected happened.

"Well. This is awkward."

Bucky's eyes flew open with an almost audible snap, and he was scooting back down the vent into a crouching position before he even registered where the voice had come from. His eyes landed on a solid form slightly concealed in the turn of the vent towards the only source of light in the crossroad, and he felt his hackles raising at the lack of a face to match to the voice. Anyone hiding out in the shadows in a ventilation unit was undoubtedly guilty of something. He silently cursed himself for his distraction before dimly belaying the curse. Expecting to meet adversity in a damn ventilation unit of a secured skyscraper was easily the last thing on his mind. His rapid fire judgment was shut down, however, as the figure suddenly extended it's hands in a peacemaking gesture, his body inching forward into the light as he spoke again, a slight twinge of dry amusement in his tone.

"Woah, there, man. I'm not looking for a fight here." There was a pause as he came closer. "Unless you are, of course, because then I'd happily oblige, seeing as you're a stranger hiding out in my ventilation."

Bucky felt a spike of dread run through him at that. 'My ventilation'? It couldn't be Tony Stark. There was no way. Did he make it a point of crawling through his ventilation shafts to check for intruders? That made no sense, he'd just ask Jarvis. So why else would he be up here? The panic coursing through Bucky's veins was almost unbearable when the figure came into the light filtering through the fan to his right.

The man was stockily built, carefully toned muscles lining his arms and shoulders as he stopped his forward motion and sat back on his haunches. A form fitting tee shirt clung to his torso, and Bucky's eyes darted over his baggy black pants and sneakers cautiously. He didn't look like the type of man Steve had made him out to be. His eyes roved back to his face, taking in the shadow of stubble on his chin and a large, gleaming white bandage plastered across easily half of his forehead. He skimmed over the patch and settled on the sandy blond of his spiked hair.

That was another thing.

He could have sworn Steve had said Stark had brown hair.

The man was speaking again, and he pulled himself from his musings to listen cautiously.

"So… you come here often?"

The deadpanned joke smacked Bucky solidly out of his defensive stance, and he relaxed exponentially. He fell out of his crouch and sat carefully back on his heels, his position mimicking the other man's perfectly. With a rueful shake of his head, he addressed him quietly.

"That's the fastest I've ever heard anyone go from threatening me to bar jokes as old as I am."

The man cracked a genuine grin at that, and he rocked out of his crouching position to sit more comfortably on the metal with a light shrug.

"Eh. You would've attacked by now if you were planning on it. That, plus the, ah-" He gestured in the general direction of Bucky's arm. Bucky followed the line of sight dumbly, staring at the bright red abomination on his bicep for a minute before turning back to the man and raising a brow, waiting for him to continue. He apparently had said all he needed to on the matter, as he plowed on, extending a hand as he spoke.

"Clint Barton. Nice to finally meet Cap's long lost war buddy."

Bucky could have slapped himself for his stupidity. Of course it was Barton; Steve had only told him about how the Hawk had gotten his name in almost every story he'd told him in the hospital. Of course he'd want to be as high as he could be in the tower. Of course he'd be in the vents. The guy had probably been in the building the whole time Bucky had been.

Bucky eyed the offered hand for a moment before raising his injured hand slowly and clasping it. He shook once solidly before letting it go and pulling back out of range from the archer. Clint raised an eyebrow at the bandages covering his hand, but thankfully didn't comment.

A slightly awkward moment of silence passed between the two before Bucky broke it with a weary sigh. "Not going to lie, Barton, I thought you were Stark."

Clint's entire forehead practically shifted upwards at that, and the archer huffed a shocked laugh. "You th- what, do I look like a cocky prick of a genius with cash to paper the walls with? Because if so, I don't know if I should be flattered or insulted."

Now it was Bucky's turn to raise his eyebrows. That certainly hadn't been the answer he'd been expecting. "You said these were 'your vents'. It's Stark's building, so I just…" He shrugged, at a loss for an ending to the sentence. Clint didn't appear to need one, however, as he laughed in earnest. He sat back further into the ledge he had been reclining in when Bucky had stumbled in, and as he moved out of the way of the main duct, Bucky got a clearer view of the small space. There was an oddly patterned cushion of some sort layered on the floor, and a crumpled bag of some sort of chips sat next to a six pack of bright red cans. The sight was undoubtedly strange, and Bucky couldn't keep himself from staring at it as Clint replied easily.

"Up until now, pal, it's just been me up here. So, yeah, 'my vents'." He paused, and Bucky's eyes snapped back to his face. There was a curious expression that he didn't really like there, and before he could speak, Barton was continuing casually. "So what brings you to my humble abode? Wanted a new perspective or something? Hell of a difference, I gotta say."

Bucky stared into his face for a long moment, watching as Barton's eyes flickered over his own rapidly. After a full minute of debating with himself, he gave in with a burst of an exhale and scrubbed his hand over his face. If this man was half as good as he'd been informed, then he'd know when he was being lied to.

Whatever.

He was exhausted, and starving, and a basket case, and guilt ridden, and honestly, he couldn't find it in himself to care about his image anymore.

So he told the truth.

"I'm a coward."

Clint blinked at that, the silence overtaking the metal enclosure oddly unnerving this time. There was a brief pause before Clint spoke.

"Uh… care to elaborate?"

Bucky shook his head, his eyes trained on the floor. "I'm hiding. From… from Steve. From everyone." He hesitated a moment, a quick glance at Barton's face revealing only patient absorption. So he continued, his head tilting back to rest against the side of the ventilation shaft.

"There's this…look they give me. Like I'm damaged goods, or something." He snorted. "Which, really, I am, but it's the look that kills me. There's only so much of it I can take sometimes. And I'm a coward. I hide from what I can't deal with." He paused again, his exhaustion motivating him to just spill his thoughts and be done with it, and he continued bitterly. "They don't know what it was like. I wasn't… I wasn't me for over fifty years, and suddenly I'm here, and they want me to just… just get better. Like, like I can just smack a bandaid over everything I've done and make it all better again. But I can't. I don't know how, and I'm honestly starting to think it can't be done." He stopped abruptly, turning his gaze back to Barton, who was watching him carefully with a neutral expression. Bucky nodded in his direction wearily.

"Why the hell am I even telling you?"

Clint huffed a laugh. "I've got a lovable face." At Bucky's disbelieving look, he shrugged. "What? I ain't lying." There was a companionable silence that fell over them for a moment before Barton continued.

"If it counts for anything, I get what it's like."

Bucky couldn't quite keep back his snort of disbelief, and after a moment, he felt slightly rude as he shot a glance towards the archer. There was a pause as Clint seemingly gathered up some sort of will to continue.

"To not be in control of yourself."

Bucky stared at him openly, and Clint shifted under his scrutiny. "Look, I don't know how much Steve told you about us, but, uh, there was this fight-"

"Here in the city. He mentioned aliens and I stopped listening."

The archer actually grinned at that. "Yeah, I probably would've too." His face fell then, and Bucky was dimly surprised at the sudden change in demeanor. "There was this guy. Loki. Complete bastard, really. We brought him down in the end, but we had casualties." He paused, seemingly gathering his thoughts as his eyes darkened in thinly veiled sorrow. He spoke with a sigh. "A lot of casualties. Loki, he had this… staff. Could control people's minds. Their thoughts. Their memories. Their goals. Everything." There was another pause before he rolled his shoulders and spoke bitterly.

"I was the first he took."

Bucky blinked in shock.

Steve had failed to mention that little tidbit.

"I killed a lot of people," Clint continued matter-of-factly. "I helped the bastard weasel his way around the globe and get everything he needed to rain absolute hell on the planet, and I did it with a smile. He forced me to do things I still have nightmares about. But Natasha…" There was an odd pause in the story as Clint gave a rueful half grin. "Nat, ah, helped me come back to my senses. But I still think about being under someone else's agenda sometimes. Being controlled. I lost every bit of will I had, and I couldn't do anything about it. So yeah, I get it. You don't think you're ever going to go a day without thinking about it again." He paused before shrugging. "You won't. But you'll stop looking at it like it's the end of your world." There was another long pause as he gathered his thoughts again before continuing slowly. "But you do heal. It just… takes a little while to remember why it's worth it."

Bucky stared at Clint, his expression utterly dumbfounded. How had Steve failed to mention something like this? There was literally another member on his team who had gone through his same hell! He turned his focus away from Barton as his thoughts whirled through his head incoherently, and he found himself staring blankly at the floor as the minutes stretched on and he attempted to process what he had just heard.

The archer regarded him silently before leaning back into his space and snagging one of the brightly colored cans from the six pack against the wall. He tore it from the plastic binders and tossed it blindly over his shoulder to Bucky, who caught it in some surprise. It made a hollow clang when it came in contact with his arm, and he glared at it for a moment before focusing on the words on the object.

Coca Cola.

Huh.

How about that.

Clint reappeared out of his crawlspace with another can clenched in his hand, and he popped it open noisily before holding it up in a mock salute and tipping it back to take a long swig. He swallowed with a relish before motioning loosely for Bucky to open his can and do the same. He did so, and after a moment's hesitation, he followed suit and tipped the can back to take an enormous gulp of his own.

Not a second later saw him spitting the soda out across the vents, his spluttering interspersed with him coughing and scraping his tongue against his teeth against the barrage of sickly sweet flavoring. He eyed the can critically before turning his focus back to a puzzled looking Clint.

"What is this?"

Clint blinked before holding his can aloft as if putting the name on a pedestal might help him understand.

"It's Coke."

Bucky shook his head, his tastebuds still fizzling with the sticky strangeness of what should have been a familiar drink. "No, it's not. There's no way it is."

Clint shot him a long look.

"Pppprrrrretty sure it is, man."

"I've had Coca Cola before, and trust me, this isn't it."

The archer quirked an eyebrow before darting a glance to the can in his hand. There was a moment of silence before he spoke awkwardly. "Well, it, uh, says it on the tin-"

"It's too…" Bucky searched for the word for a long moment before settling lamely on "…fake, to be Coke. It's... _wrong_."

Something in Clint's eyes cleared at that, and he spun the can idly in his hand to scan the microscopic list of ingredients on the back. "When was the last time you've had soda?"

Bucky was silent for a moment as he wracked his brain for the answer. It was pretty depressing, really. "Would've been around 1942."

The date didn't seem to faze Clint whatsoever, and the archer's face morphed into an understanding expression, a small "ah" of comprehension escaping him. Before Bucky could ask, Barton was speaking again.

"It's the sugar. You're used to the real stuff. It's a bunch of high fructose whatevers and other artificial things thrown together now." He regarded the can curiously for a second before speaking again, his voice deadpan. "I'm not kidding when I say they use it to literally clean blood off of the streets nowadays."

There was a long silence as Barton stared critically at the can, the heavy meaning behind his words appearing to be preventing him from taking another sip.

The hesitation didn't last for long as he shrugged and took a swig.

Bucky wrinkled his nose as he put the can down next to him with a shake of his head. "Don't think I'll ever be used to that one."

"You don't even wanna know about cheese whiz if you can't handle soda." At Bucky's incredulous look, he shrugged. "But hey, we've got microwaves and TV dinners now, so how bad can it be?"

Bucky was silent for a long moment as Clint tilted his head back completely and drained the last of the can. He put it down with an echoing, hollow clang and a shake of his head as the bubbles fizzed up his nose, and Bucky watched silently as the man stared at the wall with his face scrunched in discomfort. Bucky broke the quiet again.

"How do you do it?"

Clint shot him a glance. "What, chug? It's not that hard, it's all in the-"

Bucky held up a hand, frustration simmering in his gut. "Not the soda, Barton. The act."

The archer stared at him blankly.

"The act."

Bucky nodded as he silently waited for an answer. When it came, he was truly disappointed.

"I have no clue what you're talking about here, pal. What act?"

A sigh escaped Bucky before he could stop it, and he planted his forehead in his hand solidly before speaking. "The whole… 'everything's fine' act. The normalcy. The face. The jokes. The…" He waved a hand helplessly in Barton's direction.

"Nevermind."

The silence was suffocating this time, and Bucky lost count of the minutes that passed by as he kept his face buried in his hand and strained to hear any sound from his companion. He had almost concluded that the archer had left when he heard Barton's voice. There was no humor in it, and the low, serious tone encouraged Bucky to lift his head.

"It's not an act, Barnes. It's me." Bucky blinked at the use of his real name, and he felt his head tilting slightly as Clint continued. "Look, where I come from, you've gotta keep positive somehow. Or you'd go insane." He paused. "I prefer my marbles intact, personally, so the world gets to know the distinguished sense of shitty jokes and horribly timed puns that is Clint Barton." He ran his eyes searchingly over Bucky then before running a hand through his hair. "You'll get there, man. Just don't give up on yourself so soon, you got that?"

Bucky was quiet for a brief moment before he nodded slowly. A slight grin grew on Clint's face, and the archer sat back against his wall. "And hey, you know where to find me. If you ever need help with all of…" He waggled his fingers beside his temple. "…this nonsense, come get me. I get what you're up against here."

If there was moisture prickling at Bucky's eyes then, he'd deny it until the day he died.

He couldn't believe it. Where in the world had Clint Barton been his whole miserable rebirth in reality?

The archer winced suddenly, his head tilting to an odd angle as a hand flew to his ear. Bucky watched in some slight concern (and wasn't that a weird feeling) as the man brought his index finger and his thumb to his right ear. After a moment of pinching, he removed a small, flesh colored bud. At Bucky's curious look, Clint smiled unabashedly.

"Well. You're one of the privileged few who know the truth behind the great Hawkeye's simply fabulous marksmanship, man." He held the tiny thing up in his palm, and Bucky squinted at the small blinking light in the middle of the object. "It's a hearing aid. Stark designed it for me a few months ago when I got back from a mission that went… well, a lot more south than it ever should have when SHIELD went all…" He trailed off and gestured to the bandage on his forehead. Bucky stared incredulously at the aid before slowly looking back up to Clint's face.

"You're telling me you're deaf."

Clint's face was blank. "What?"

Bucky raised his voice slightly. "I said, you're telling me-"

He stopped when Clint burst into laughter and waved him off. "Nah, stop it, man, I heard you perfectly fine. Still got my other aid in," he said between laughs, his hand flapping loosely towards his other ear. "But yeah. 80% deaf, both ears. Helluva fun time growing up without a steady supply of these babies." He gestured towards the bud in his palm.

Bucky felt a slow, genuine smile began to grow across his face, and suddenly, he felt lighter than he had in years. The cracks in the wall surrounding his mind widened all that much more, and the sunlight he'd begun to feel from Natasha grew tenfold. Suddenly, he wasn't quite so certain he'd be doomed to reliving the horrors that were his memories for the rest of his miserable life.

Suddenly, he had solid proof of a chance.

Clint was facing the grate at the end of his little duct space, and the archer shot a glance over his shoulder. "I need to take this thing to Tony. It's still in prototype phase, so he'll want to know what's up with it. You feel like coming with?"

Bucky was silent for a long moment before he slowly shook his head. "Go for it. I get the feeling he's… not ready to see me yet."

Clint watched him carefully before shrugging lightly and popping the grate off of the vent. Bucky glanced over the archer's shoulder and caught a view of rows upon rows of sleek, modern shelves. The library. They were above the library.

Clint slid easily out of the vent, his feet touching down lightly on top of one of the shelves. He snagged another can of the soda as he turned back to replace the grate, and he regarded Bucky for a second before grinning.

"Make yourself at home, man. I've only got about fifty other stations set up throughout the building. Steve's never found any of 'em."

And with that, he disappeared from view without a sound.

Bucky stayed in that crawlspace for a long while that day before crawling down himself and making his way back to his room. He'd meet Stark eventually.

Unfortunately for him, the meeting would come much sooner and much more explosively than he ever would have liked it to.


	6. The Opposite of Amnesia

**AN: And here it is, folks. The last chapter! Thank you all for reading, and I hope you find it in yourselves to leave a last review and let me know what you thought before this story is lost to the archives! **

**This is a very, VERY lengthy chapter, so don't say I didn't warn you! Got some angst like whoa close to the end...**

**Happy reading!**

* * *

><p>The storm had taken them all by surprise, really.<p>

Rain lashed at the windows mercilessly, and between the weather reports from the news and Thor's near constant grumbling at the lack of Midgardian sunlight to revel in, it was hard to tell if the thunder that rolled through every few minutes was natural or not. Floods of gushing water had been rushing through the streets since the start of the freak storm a little more than twenty four hours prior, and Bucky could practically feel the boredom rolling off of the remaining inhabitants of the tower as he sat on the edge of a recliner beside the enormous couch in the main floor.

Thor was sitting on the ground, his back against the couch and his legs stretched in front of him as he glared balefully at the screen mounted high on the opposite wall. There was a remote of sorts in his hands, and he was clicking away at the buttons with a ferocity that was undoubtedly only going to end in something breaking. Bright flashes of light and a repetitive, incredibly fake punching noise was streaming from the screen, and Bucky had found his eye had begun twitching only minutes into his horrible decision to sit and watch just whatever video game it was that the god was playing.

His opponent wasn't helping the atmosphere much.

"And that's twenty seven for twenty seven, big guy," Clint crooned from what Bucky really could only describe as his perch on the back of the couch, his feet kicking slightly off of the cushions in a tiny twitch of victory as the screen erupted in an outrageously realistic explosion. Thor all but roared, and a humongous flash of lightning streaked across the skies as the scoreboards zipped across the screen. Bucky couldn't quite keep the look of utter disbelief off of his face when the god flung the object nearest to him at the screen with a vehement curse. Luckily for them, it was only a magazine, and it hit the blinking screen with a pathetic thwap before sliding down to flop haphazardly on the floor.

"Clint, stop pissing him off. This storm's bad enough already.

The three occupants of the living room turned as one to regard Steve, who had spoken from where he was leaning lightly against the bar. His eyebrow was raised sardonically, and he dug around distractedly through a bag of pretzels that was laying out beside a plate with a toasted sandwich of some sort. Clint stretched his arms high over his head, the controller clasped tightly in his hand as he groaned.

"Aw, c'mon Cap, don't be like that. You're blaming me for his horrible fighting skills?"

Thor spun in his seat to glare venomously at Clint, who simply waggled his eyebrows in return.

"Your simulated war is no standard for my skills in battle! You have no right to claim such, Eye of the Hawk!"

Clint just blinked at him, his grin downright predatory.

"So how's about another round to prove that?"

Bucky almost groaned.

Almost.

He turned his focus away from the trash talking that had ensued from the archer and the god as another bout of noise and flashing light powered up on the screen, and he found his eyes training on the rivets of water rushing down the floor to ceiling window that stretched across the wall. If he was entirely honest with himself, he could have sworn he felt the beginnings of boredom stirring inside of him as well.

That was a feeling he definitely was not used to.

"You want another one?"

The voice startled him slightly, and he tilted his head back to look up at Steve, who had wandered further into the room. His friend was pointing to the plate balanced on Bucky's knee, and he found himself glancing down despite himself. The tan crumbs of what had been a Pop-Tart were scattered around the thin plate. Thor had offered to make him a pack when he had wandered down to the kitchen that morning, and he had been unwillingly introduced to the cinnamon sugar variety of the pastry.

He had been surprised to find it had actually been pretty good.

He shook his head and shifted the plate on his knee to keep it from tilting it's contents all over the floor. "I think two's enough for me." At Steve's hesitant look, he hastily tacked on an awkward addition. "For now. He'll probably want to make the whole cabinet of them before the rain stops."

Steve grinned slightly at that as they both ignored Thor's indignant "I would do no such thing!", and Bucky felt a rush of relief at the distinct lack of the searching look in Steve's eyes.

He'd gone to find him shortly after meeting Clint.

Steve had definitely been confused about why he'd been avoiding him at first, but at the sight of his busted hand, his expression had cleared considerably. He'd snagged an icepack before Bucky could so much as say a word, and before he had known it, he had been sitting on Steve's couch with a frozen package of peas pressed over his knuckles. In retrospect, it had felt incredible.

He'd haltingly begun to speak in earnest then, and Steve had listened with that same neutral look on his face he'd worn in the hospital, and it had only spurred Bucky on to spill his guts and be done with it. He'd talked about missions. About times he thought he knew he was trapped somehow. About the war. About memories he wasn't sure were real or not. About meeting the others and their surprisingly gracious reception of him(and he sorely hoped Jarvis had been listening). About their conversations.

About the gym.

And about Steve.

Through it all, he hadn't batted an eye. He'd just sat patiently and listened, nodding now and then in encouragement as Bucky dug deep to put every insecurity, every emotion he couldn't handle on his own out there. Bruce had said he'd had help pulling himself out of his ocean. The only reason Clint was back to the way he was was because of Natasha.

Bucky could do with a little help.

When he had finished, it had been silent for barely a minute before Steve had stood from his chair and stepped forward to plant his hands on Bucky's shoulders. He'd been smiling, but Bucky knew him too well.

Steve Rogers had a horrible habit of smiling when he was sad.

He'd forgiven him, and when Bucky hadn't believed it, he'd told him again. He was still telling him, and slowly, Bucky was starting to think there just might be a chance he could believe it. Divulging all of the toxic thoughts that had been building pressure in his brain had felt incredible, anyhow, and if he had tears running down his face when Steve had pulled him in for a crushing hug, well.

He'd deny it.

So he'd made it a point of trying to get back into the flow of things over the next few days.

And here he found himself, leaning back in a reclining chair with the remains of a Pop-Tart on his lap in the company of a super soldier as old as he was, a norse god with some serious competitive issues, and a deaf archer recovering from a mind invasion not too far from his own.

He found himself questioning how this had become the most normal part of any of his days in the tower quite often.

A fresh crack of thunder caused him to jump slightly, and he scrubbed his healing hand lightly over the back of his neck at the prickling feeling of the hairs standing on end. "Thor, not for nothing here, but could you take it easy on the thunder? It's, ah, a little loud."

Thor's eyes were still glued to the screen, and he didn't look away as he addressed Bucky. "That was not me, friend Bucky. That was your own natural Midgardian weather just now."

Bucky exchanged a short glance with Steve, who shrugged half heartedly, his eyebrows raised in an over exaggerated expression of what Bucky could only translate to "you don't say." He snorted slightly, and Steve clapped his shoulder before snagging the empty plate and making his way back to the kitchen to leave Bucky alone to watch the chaos erupting on the screen.

It looked like Clint was winning by a landslide.

Surprise, surprise.

An incredibly short minute passed before he made an executive decision and stood from the recliner, his muscles protesting the movement as he stretched. He winced as an audible crack ran up his spine.

Yeesh, how long had he been sitting in the same position?

"Are you not entertained?"

Bucky's gaze slid to Clint, who had shot the quip to him without unpeeling his eyes from the screen. When Bucky didn't readily reply, however, the archer turned his focus away to stare at him incredulously. He glanced between Bucky and Steve, a thoroughly disappointed look on his face.

"'Gladiator'? Anyone? No one?" He shook his head, ignoring Thor's victorious bellow as the tiny character on screen resembling Clint was knocked out of frame. "I mean, him I understand," he gestured to Bucky, who raised an eyebrow sarcastically in return. "But, Steve, man. That's just painful."

Steve watched the archer toss his arms in the air and quirked a hint of an amused smile. "Not all of us have had time to sit back and have weekly movie night's these last few years, Clint. You've had all the time in the world."

Clint rocked back in mock offense, his expression devastated. "Woah, woah, woah, what was that? All the time in the world? That seems a little drastic, don't you think?"

"Ah, leave me alone and go back to wiping the floor with Thor, joker."

Suddenly, Barton stiffened with a violent abruptness, and Bucky noted the change with concerned curiosity. He shot a glance to Steve, and his curiosity only deepened when he saw the expression of confusion morphing to a dawning look of horrific realization on his friend's face. He looked like he wanted to kick himself, and Bucky could already see the wheels turning in his head as he mentally backpedaled in the conversation.

Before Steve could so much as say a word, however, the wave of rigid stillness that had swept over Clint was gone, and that easy smirk was back in place.

"Excuse you, Cap, but I happen to know for a fact you know I haven't had a frickin' second to myself. You're the one who gave me my 'warm welcome' home from Canada." He layered on the sarcasm on the "warm welcome," and Bucky felt his curiosity peak when Steve's grinned sadly, an apologetic glimmer in his eye.

"Yeah, well. Someone had to do it."

He cut off the conversation rapidly then, turning to Bucky so fast he almost didn't appear to have moved his head. "Barton did have a valid question, though. You going somewhere?"

Bucky took half a second to glance between the two before he shoved the odd conversation into the back of his mind to investigate at a later time. Clint had already gone back to the game, and while he was still sitting with that mischievous smile and had slipped easily back into trash talking Thor, his movements were off somehow, his eyes slightly unfocused. Bucky turned away reluctantly to face Steve.

"Figured I'd grab a book or something. Might as well have something to do."

Steve paused, a pretzel halfway to his mouth as he considered his words. "You could pay Bruce a visit. He's down in his lab doing some research. He'd probably like having someone to bounce ideas off of."

Bucky stared blankly at his friend. "Do I look like I want anything bounced off of me right now, Steve?"

Clint's voice rose over Thor's vehement shouts of "to victory!"

"Hand me a few of those pretzels and we can test that question, Barnes."

Barely a second passed before a pretzel went soaring through the air and smacked Clint solidly in the nose. He froze and turned to stare balefully at Bucky, who gave him a blank look in return. Steve was shaking his head with a mutter that sounded very much so like "now, children", the bag of pretzels having shifted out of his reach and settled suspiciously close to Bucky's hand on the counter. Clint shook his own head as he turned his focus back to the game with a snort.

"Fine, then. You could always call Nat. Or Sam. I'm sure either of them would love to kick your ass in the gym."

Steve snorted before Bucky could answer. "I don't know about Natasha, but I get the feeling Sam would probably not enjoy that as much as you think he would."

"Ah, you lie."

Steve shook his head good naturedly as he reached back over the counter to snag his sandwich. He tilted his head back as he seemingly thought for a moment before addressing Bucky again.

"Try the library. There's a stack of classics in the back left corner that I sort of…" He paused, and, at loss for a better word, finished with a sheepish cough. "…uh, hoarded."

Bucky punched his arm lightly as he strode past towards the elevator. He ignored Steve's sarcastic "ouch" and grinned to himself as the doors to the lift slid open easily.

Funny how it would take a day like today to bring him back some sense of normalcy.

The doors closed around him, and Jarvis' easy voice filtered through the speakers. "Will you be going to the library per Captain Roger's suggestion, sir?"

Bucky leaned back against the wall, his hands closing gingerly around the sleek rail behind him. "I don't see why not. Take me down."

The elevator bobbed before beginning it's slow descent, the floor numbers blinking over the doors as they climbed lower and lower down the building. He watched them lazily, his eyes not quite seeing them as they flashed past the conference levels. When Steve had said he'd been collecting 'classics', Bucky couldn't so much as guess as to what they might have been. He'd read plenty back in his time, but he'd never paid much attention to up and coming authors of any kind, really. He'd been plenty interested in the future, sure, he just didn't keep track of who was going where and who was the next predicted prodigy of the day and age. Howard Stark made it entirely impossible to not be at least somewhat interested in the days to come, though.

Howard Stark.

Howard Stark.

_Howard Stark._

_A headline, bold and black and obnoxiously enormous, smacked across the front page of every newspaper stand he'd walked past on that nearly deserted street, the blood on his shirt covered ineffectively with his jacket._

**_Billionaire Innovator and Wife Killed in Fatal Wreck, Son to Inherit Stark Industries._**

_He'd ignored the flapping papers and the curious glances as he strode back to the rendezvous point, the gun that had put the bullet in the brain of his target tucked neatly in his back pocket under his coat._

_He wasn't one to look back and appreciate his past work._

Bucky resurfaced violently from the unbidden memory with a gasp as a thunderous crash rattled through the elevator. The cabin shook ominously, and Bucky threw a hand out to steady himself both physically and mentally. What had he just seen?

He tilted his head back and barked out a clipped demand to the ceiling, his thoughts racing.

"Jarvis, what happened?"

The AI's voice piped into the room before he had even finished speaking, and if Bucky didn't know any better, he would have thought he sounded disgruntled. "Our Asgardian visitor appears to be rather upset over being 0-28 with our Master Barton. He's channeling the lightning straight into the roof of the build-"

He didn't finish.

Another ear shattering cacophony of sound exploded though the carriage, and Bucky scrabbled desperately for the bar as the entire cabin dropped a few heart wrenching yards in an uncontrolled free fall. He lunged for the doors as soon as it slowed back to a stop and shoved his fingers futilely at the crack between the doors. He spoke through gritted teeth as he attempted to pry open the panels with little success.

"What the _hell_, Jarvis? I thought a building like this would have better security measures than this against something like _lightning_!"

Jarvis' voice was clipped when he spoke again, and he sounded righteously pissed for a disembodied computer. It gave Bucky pause, and if he hadn't been stuck in a potential plummeting deathtrap, he would have found the tone hilarious.

"I _do_, Sergeant, however it's slightly more difficult to disperse energy as abundant as what Master Thor has decided to kindly gift us with directly."

Bucky opened his mouth to respond as his fingers fluttered lightly over the door in search for a weakness.

Whatever he had to say never came.

A third crack of thunder exploded through the elevator, and Bucky rammed his hands over his ears as the noise reverberated in his skull. The booming continued for a few impossibly long seconds, and with an abruptness that had Bucky's heart skipping a beat, the lights shut out with a pathetic groan.

He barely had time to lunge for the bar before the entire carriage began to plummet.

His heart hammered painfully in his chest as the elevator sped downwards, it's momentum gaining in speed as it free fell down the length of the building. He could feel his feet trying desperately to lift from the floor, and he gripped the bar with an inhuman strength as an unbidden yell left him. The pitch darkness made it impossible for him to find the exit he so desperately needed, and as the screeching of the falling lift filled his ears, he felt a flash of true panic course through him. He shouted to be heard over the groaning of the plunging lift.

"Jarvis, stop this thing! Slow it down!"

There was no answer.

A chill ran through him as he shouted for the AI again. At the continued silence, he forced himself to shove away from the bar and run his hands frantically over the walls in search for a maintenance hatch. He'd expect it to be on the ceiling, but really, who could know with Tony Stark.

He had no sooner let go of the bar when an enormous _kathunk_ echoed through the chamber and the elevator slowed with a harsh abruptness that knocked Bucky clean off of his feet. He landed in a heap by the door as the elevator stopped entirely with a wheezing groan, and he sat in the dark for a long minute as he strained to listen for any sound of the lift threatening to plummet again.

His ragged breath was the only noise.

A shaky sigh of an exhale burst out of him as he levered himself upright, and he squinted his eyes at the door as he planted his hand firmly on it.

"Jarvis?"

Silence.

Bucky furrowed his brow at the lack of a response. The tower must have had a backup generator of sorts then, if Jarvis hadn't stopped his unexpected detour. Or maybe he had, and part of his circuitry was fried. Bucky couldn't find it in himself to care either way.

He was just giddy it had stopped.

As he leaned further against the door, it creaked slightly, and much to his surprise, a tiny crack formed between the two panels. Bucky leapt at the chance and shoved his metal fingers into the opening between the doors, a grim sense of victory running through him as he wedged them effectively open. With a grunt, he pushed all the effort he had into the hydraulics of his arm.

Within seconds he had the doors flung open.

He slipped out easily as they rattled into their docks, and as he levered himself up to the floor just at shoulder height above him, he glanced around for any sort of clue of where he had ended up. He was sorely disappointed to find himself in no better position than when he was in the elevator. The room was just as dark as the lift had been, however a picture window running along the wall offered what little light the storm outside had to give. There was a smell of something burning in the air, and Bucky wrinkled his nose against the acrid scent. He wracked his brain for a room where he had smelled something like that in his explorations, but he drew a blank.

A sharp fork of lightning split the sky outside of the window, the flash of light giving Bucky barely a millisecond to see what was in the room. From what he could see, it looked like Banner's living area. Had he ended up in Bruce's apartment? No, that didn't make sense, Bruce had a floor just a few units down from the main room. It wouldn't have been this far down the building.

Bucky stepped further into the room hesitantly as his eyes adjusted much too slow for his liking, and he navigated around the smudged figures of furniture with relative ease. After a couple of minutes of uneasy silence, he called out.

"Hello?"

There was no reply to his steady shout. He was stuck between being relieved and being unnerved at that.

A minute of maneuvering found him the couch, and he sat on the edge with a grunt before tying the strands of hair that had fallen loose from the elastic he had taken to using to keep them back. Natasha had thrown it at him at dinner the other day with some snide comment about how much of a mess he had looked.

The smug look on her face when he had actually taken to using it was still something he was actively trying to forget.

Well.

So much for his most 'normal' day in the tower.

Another bolt of lightning licked at the building, and Bucky squinted against the harsh light. It threw the room into drastic depressions of shadows from the furniture and work counter, and Bucky watched them flicker sightlessly. As the light flickered out abruptly, however, he found himself narrowing his eyes even more as something flashed across his vision just in time to disappear with the lightning.

Were those… stairs?

Bucky was standing before he knew what he was doing, and after another bout of careful maneuvering around the coffee table, he drew to a hesitant stop in the general area where he had thought he'd seen the downwards leading stairway. No sense stepping too close and falling without knowing just what it was.

After a brief minute of waiting, another flash of lightning illuminated the room, and sure enough, there was a large, rectangular gap in the floor, glass looking stairs leading downwards in a long, arcing spiral. Bucky found himself staring in their direction long after the light had disappeared, and he debated heavily with himself as he stood rooted to his spot.

His curiosity won out in the end.

With careful precision and silence, he stepped down into the stairway carefully, his hand brushing lightly over the wall for balance as he worked his way downwards. The curve was surprisingly short despite how grandiose it had looked from above, and he had reached the bottom before he even realized it.

A quick glance revealed an enormous panel of interlocking glass and metal that gleamed even in the darkness rising from the floor to connect with the ceiling. Bucky squinted at the glass curiously, as a faint light tinged with blues and whites was filtering through from several different points in the room beyond the barrier. He edged along the panel slowly, his eyes roving over it in search of an entrance.

He found it a lot sooner than he had expected.

A thick, rectangular cut was carved out of one of the metal panels enveloped in the glass, and he squinted at the long, curving handle before reaching out to nudge at it carefully.

The shock that ran through him when it bumped open almost had him taking a step back.

The door swung open with barely a sound, but Bucky hardly noticed it as an entirely new noise suddenly overtook his senses from the room. A loud voice was ranting from somewhere in the confines of the area, and judging by the tone, its owner was furious.

"-swear to God, I'm turning you all to scrap when I get these things up again. The _generator_, Dummy, not the microwave. No, not- no, the… _no_! I programmed you better than this, man. You're a disgrace. Yeah, you heard me right, I said a disgrace. No, don't look at me like that, just go put that thing down and bring me what I asked for, capiche? Jarvis! Talk to me here, why isn't my power back up? C'mon, give me something to go off of, guys, let's go." There was a short, sharp clap that echoed through the pitch black room unnervingly.

Bucky listened to the oddly scratchy voice, his curiosity not quite outweighing a distant feeling of icy dread that was seeping slowly into his veins.

There was only one man left in this building who that voice could belong to.

He had to leave.

_Now_.

And yet, he found himself frozen in place, his legs refusing to move as he listened to the voice that sounded a bit too much like a man he once knew in a past he'd be better off never knowing.

"Jarvis, that threat about scrap includes you at this point, pal. Always need more circuit boards. Where the hell are you? Butterfingers, put that down. No, just-just _leave_ it, I'll get it. Hand me that plug."

There was an odd rustling, rattling sound from the center of the room and an echoing kathunk reminiscent of the elevator that shook Bucky back into action. He was backing towards the door when the voice spoke again, exhausted sarcasm making the words particularly grating on his ears.

"Annnnnnd let there be light."

The lights in the room powered on in full suddenly, and Bucky's arms leapt instinctively over his face to shield his eyes from the blinding glow. His eyes watered against the stinging feeling the brightness brought, and the room before him swam into view agonizingly slowly. A swell of incredibly loud music powered through the room in time with the lights, the cacophony of wailing guitars and overpowering drums swamping Bucky's senses and setting him on edge as his eyes roved rapidly over the newly lit room.

It was a lab.

He was in one of the lower labs.

Which meant the man standing before him was undoubtedly who he thought it was.

The owner of the voice was facing the opposite direction, an odd robotic looking… thing hovering around him uncertainly as he muttered to himself. Something in Bucky's mind screamed at him to backpedal the hell out of there, but he was rooted to the spot, his eyes glued to the back of the man's head. His arm fell to his side, and he stared at the man who had been actively avoiding him the entirety of his stay.

Which, as he now was beginning to figure with an overwhelming feeling of dread, was for good reason.

The man was talking louder again, and before Bucky could register what was happening, he was turning to face his direction.

"Jarvis, you up yet? I need some input on the new modifications to the capacitors here. After, y'know, I cancel all of your recordings of whatever that-"

There was a moment where his eyes skimmed straight over Bucky before they skipped back to him and stared in confusion. Barely a second passed before those same eyes bugged.

"-stuffy sho_woahohohoholy shit_!"

The explosive expletive caught Bucky off guard, and he took a step back as the man stumbled back on his own, his hand flailing for the edge of the table as he tripped over his own feet.

Tony Stark was the spitting image of his father.

Bucky stared in disbelief at the man standing frozen in the middle of the room, his eyes taking in every detail.

Whatever he had been expecting of the elusive Tony Stark, the image before him now was most certainly not it.

His entire figure was unkempt, his hair a disheveled mess and his clothing streaked with grease and grime. There were singes running upwards on the hair on his arms, and just barely scabbing pricks and scratches fairly littered his fingers and hands. His entire form was surprisingly gaunt, and Bucky couldn't help the flash of doubt that ran through his mind about this man possibly being the superhero that Steve had made him out to be.

Bags hung thick and purple under his eyes, and the wild spark in his slightly manic stare reminded him a little too much of his own reflection those few weeks after he had been reborn in that waterlogged cabin in the mountains of Tennessee. Stubble cast shadows across his pasty face, and there was a sunken look to him that had Bucky wondering just when the last time he'd eaten a meal.

He looked like absolute hell warmed over.

He didn't know how long it took him to take in the little details Tony unknowingly gave him, but he resurfaced with a jolt when the man yelled at the top of his lungs, his hand scrabbling for something red and suspiciously gauntlet looking on his workbench.

"_JARVIS_!"

Bucky winced harshly at the the shout, and his hands flew to his ears on their own accord as the sound echoed.

And echoed.

_And echoed_.

It kept echoing for far too long, and he stared in mounting confusion as he realized Tony's lips were no longer moving. Yet the scream kept reverberating in his head, and suddenly, he wasn't in the lab any more.

He was standing in the middle of an empty highway.

Well.

Mostly empty.

_"Maria!"_

_The scream rang through the air, the man's voice devastated as the name left his lips in a panicked shout. There was blood running down the side of his face from where his head had slammed against the steering wheel, but the injury didn't appear to be bothering him, nor did the fact that the entire front half of the car he was seated in was missing, torn straight from the body of the vehicle. The truck that had plowed through it was nowhere to be found by now, and the second car that had rammed the little two seater from behind at the same instant had driven off of the edge of the bridge the highway snaked across. It had disappeared under the waves within seconds._

_Despite the flawless execution, they had sent him. To ensure nothing went wrong. To clean up afterwards, as it were._

_Because the Winter Soldier never left survivors._

_As he watched the man wrestle with his seatbelt, that name still wretchedly spilling off of his lips, he understood just why he'd been sent._

_They'd warned him the target was resilient._

_They hadn't been kidding._

_He hefted the gun on his shoulder as he stepped away from the shelter the guardrail had given him and began his slow walk towards the man. He had undone the seatbelt by now and was sprawled across the middle of the car's cabin, his hands grasping at the face of his companion. Her eyes were wide open, and yet they refused to track any of his movements. The red on her face stood in stark contrast to her pale skin, the painted scarlet on her lips blending under the blood that ran down her chin. The desperate calls of "Maria! Oh, God, no, don't do this to me, Maria!" pierced the air relentlessly, and the Winter Soldier narrowed his eyes as he stalked closer._

_Shame she had to get involved._

_She was pitifully small in death._

_The man's sobs were replaced by a haggard gasp for breath as he caught sight of the leather clad assassin striding purposefully across the bridge, his eyes landing on the imposing gun hefted over his shoulder. His expression morphed into one of pure fury, and he let out a hoarse roar as he scrambled to get back in his seat and reach for the door._

_The assassin was on him before he could grasp the handle._

_He shoved the man back, his hand pushing mercilessly at his shoulder. The target gave a cry of pain, his hand flying to the bones he had felt shift beneath his grip. The Winter Soldier scrutinized him carefully. He'd avoid a bullet as best he could. They'd made it clear._

_This had to be staged as an accident._

_He'd no sooner decided the fact than the man let out a purely primal shout of outrage, his fist swinging wildly at the assassin's face._

_It glanced off of his cheek, the goggles and mask tearing away as he staggered back from the force. He glared down at the man._

_That had certainly made his decision of a quick versus long death for him._

_But he froze abruptly as the man's eyes blew even wider than they already were, and suddenly the target was speaking, his voice full of horrified disbelief._

_"You!"_

_The Winter Soldier stared into the man's frenzied eyes, his legs rooted to the spot as his brain pulled to a halting stop. He regarded the target carefully, his eyes roving over the middle aged man as he tried to desperately piece together if he had seen him before._

_He came up blank._

_"You were dead! You… you fell!"_

_He remained silent as he watched the man's face flicker through a million emotions in a minute as he spoke again. "Steve mourned you! They all did! How… you're the… you're the same!"_

_The seething anger overtook his face again with an abruptness that confused the assassin, and suddenly the target was growling. "You goddamned son of a bitch, why did you do it? Why ? You took her from me! Maria!"_

_And suddenly, he was scrabbling for the door again._

_The Soldier let him, and looked on with empty eyes. He knew him._

_He knew him._

_How did he know him?_

_Someone called Steve… and others? Mourned for him?_

_The man had the door open and had his hand grasped solidly around the top of the frame, his other hand planted on the steering wheel as he tried to lever himself out of the car with a hoarse yell of Soldier decided then._

_A mission._

_He'd make it quick._

_One blow from the end of the gun to the back of his head and silence reigned over the highway again as the hand slipped from the door and landed at his side._

_He stared down at his work for too long, much too long. He had to leave. Had to meet the rendezvous. Had to report. Had to sleep for years and years and years . Until they needed him again._

_But he knew him._

_A result._

A result.

Of course.

He'd known him.

He'd murdered Howard Stark.

The pain that lanced through his chest at the realization was almost too much for him to bear, and with a suddenness that left him reeling, he pulled himself back from his dead zone to vaguely notice he was on the floor.

He blinked in overwhelmed confusion as he tilted his head back to look up, and he furrowed his brow as he gasped in haggard breath after haggard breath. It appeared he had backed into the glass and simply slid down into an ungainly, sprawled sort of sitting position. He glanced down sharply as the pain lanced through his chest again, and he uncurled his hand from where it was digging through his shirt to his skin. He forced himself to shut his eyes as another rasping breath rattled through his chest, and he focused intently on evening the flow as best he could as the horrific image of Howard's desperate eyes staring back into his flooded his vision.

He'd be seeing that memory in his dreams for the rest of his life, he was certain of it.

It took a few long minutes, but he managed to even his breathing to a slightly less frantic pattern as he wrangled some control over himself.

It was only then that he remembered what had triggered him.

His eyes flew open, and he lifted his head so quickly he could feel his neck crack. His gaze landed on Tony Stark, who hadn't moved an inch from his position beside the table. The billionaire's hand was still clasped to the table, but the position looked a little less… terrified, somehow.

Bucky stared into his face, his gaze searching as he scanned over the man's features. All surprise had left his face, and now, he simply looked wary as he stared down at the quivering mess of a man pressed against the floor of his doorway. They stayed that way for a long few minutes, neither breaking the intensity of the stare that was passing between them. The only sound in the room was Bucky's wavering breaths, and he dimly noted that Stark must have shut off the music at some point. He faintly wondered how long he had gone under.

The stare suddenly got to be too much for him, and he inhaled one last shuddering breath as he felt the sweat that had broken out across his neck go cold. And suddenly, he was blurting words.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry-"

Tony's eyebrows flew to his hairline as Bucky stammered useless apologies left and right, and the man slowly let go of the table as the tirade of "I'm sorry"s morphed into actual words.

"It was my fault, I know it was, I just couldn't remember it, they made me forget, oh God, I'm so sorry— they made me… they said I… that he… I couldn't fight it, I couldn't do anything— but I should have, oh, God, I'm sorry, Howard—"

He knew there were tears streaming down his face, but he couldn't bring himself to care as he stared directly into the eyes of the man who's only family had been murdered by his hand.

And those eyes looked incredibly empty for what they were witnessing.

Bucky broke the stare to look down at anything but that face that looked so much like Howard's, his gaze landing on his shaking hands. He stared numbly at the metal glinting under the light, tears dripping to land mockingly on his palms.

"He knew me. He _knew me_, and I couldn't- I couldn't do anything to stop it from happening, and he had so much to give the future, so damn much, and I took it! I took it from you! Oh, _God_, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry-"

He broke off as his throat constricted around the words, and suddenly, it was all just too much for him to bear. He had to leave, he had to get out of there, he had to get away, he had to _forget_, and he had to _breathe_, he couldn't _breathe, dammit, why couldn't he breathe-_

"Hey."

His head snapped back up, and he jerked back as Tony's face swam into view. The man was crouching a few feet in front of him, his elbows planted on his knees and his hands clasped tightly together as he regarded him carefully. Bucky stared at him, desperately needing him to understand what had happened. He hadn't meant it, he hadn't planned it, but that was no excuse, he still did it, and he'd completed the mission-

"Stop. Deep breath. Try it."

Bucky shut his mouth as he realized he had been stammering aloud again, and he forced himself to inhale deeply through his nose as Tony watched him with a carefully guarded expression. When he exhaled, Tony nodded.

"Do it again. Keep going."

It took a few long minutes, but Bucky eventually got his breathing back under control under Tony's careful guidance, his eyes never leaving the man's face as he spoke to him lowly. When he thought he could speak without panicking this time, he swallowed heavily and opened his mouth. Tony held up a hand, his expression still as blank as it had been before. The simple motion effectively cut him off, and Bucky felt the words die on his tongue as Tony spoke after a long second of regarding him.

"You feel like you're burning from the inside out sometimes."

Bucky stared at him, confusion battling for dominance over the maelstrom of other emotions raging in his chest. Tony continued before he could say a word.

"The memories. They just hit you upside the head and beat you to the dirt until you feel like you've died all over again sometimes, yeah? You feel like it's not worth it to stick around for round two or three or twenty."

Tony shifted back slightly as Bucky continued to study his face for any form of emotion. He gave the downed soldier a sigh before he stood in full and shoved his hands into his pockets before giving him another long, searching look.

"You feel like you'd be better off if you just gave it up."

Bucky couldn't believe it, but he was nodding.

He was _nodding._

Tony sniffed then. Actually, full on _sniffed._

"Too bad."

Bucky blinked.

Okay.

He certainly hadn't expected that to come next.

Tony looked down at him as he spoke, and Bucky saw a spark of something in his eye he couldn't quite place. He wasn't entirely sure he _wanted_ to. "You don't get to make that call. You don't get to decide who you are. All you get to decide is how you can aim towards who you want to be." He paused briefly as he gathered his next words, and Bucky looked on in confusion as the man kept talking. "Always gonna be people who try to screw with that. But…" He paused, visibly uncomfortable with the conversation now. "Sometimes you can't screw 'em right back after they've messed with you. But you can frickin' move _on_. Get on to the good part, you know? Don't get… hung up on the things you can't—_couldn't_ change. Let me just say, it's definitely not worth the anxiety attacks, pal."

Bucky stared at him for a long minute after he had finished, and when he spoke, his voice was barely a confused whisper.

"But I killed—"

Tony snapped his hand back up again to stop him mid sentence.

"Yeah, I'm gonna stop you there. Last I checked, which was, y'know, very much so recently and very much so _thoroughly_, HYDRA killed them. Tell me, on a scale of none to lying, how much free will did you have in that decision?"

He couldn't keep the disbelief off of his face as he looked up at the man who's life he should have ruined so long ago. The man who should have been after _his_ life. Revenge. Explanations. _Something._

Now, he wasn't so sure of himself.

"I didn't-"

"Ah, there it is, you didn't."

Tony gave him a shrug, his shoulders staying at their peak for a long moment before falling back to normal. The billionaire gave Bucky a raised eyebrow then as the crumpled man lowered his head to stare numbly at the floor. Tony's eyes roved over his wrecked form searchingly, apparently finding what they needed to see, as some of the tension he had been holding off releasing dissipated from his shoulders. His eyes landed on the bionic arm, and Bucky shifted it awkwardly when the hard stare became a little too prying.

At the movement, Tony spun tipsily on his heels and strode back to his workbench, leaving Bucky to stare at his retreating back in numb shock.

Had he really just… _moved on_? So easily?

It made no sense. There had to be an angle.

…Right?

"Get over here."

Bucky's focus snapped back onto Tony, who was in the process of eyeing his desk and the mass of clutter littering it's surface. Barely a second passed before he swept an arm out and simply knocked the entirety of the mess onto the floor with a rattling clang. Bucky winced at the noise as it continued, pieces of metal and carbon fibre and lord knew what else cascading to the ground in a heap. Tony nodded appreciatively at his work before snagging a pair of work goggles that sat atop one of the nervously shifting robots beside the desk. He turned back to Bucky as almost an afterthought, and he raised an eyebrow sardonically when he saw the man had yet to move. He nodded at Bucky's arm, and when he spoke, he sounded entirely genuine.

"_That_ needs work. How the hell have you been even functioning with that much deadweight locked up in the clamps?"

Bucky just stared.

And stared.

And Tony let loose an explosive sigh of exasperation.

"Look, let me put it this way. I… wouldn't be where I'm at today if none of…" He waved his hand distractedly, his eyes giving nothing away. "…it had happened. So shut up and get over here."

Bucky blinked. "I… didn't say anything."

The billionaire spared him a glance. "Yeah, well. You were thinking."

An unnervingly silent moment passed by as Bucky stayed rooted to the spot.

Then, he made the decision he only hoped was right.

He stood.

And he walked up to the man he'd so wronged to sit even with him and accept his help.

Something changed in Tony then, and his full weight seemed to sag in on himself as he let out another loud exhale and began to inspect the arm resting on the table and the shoulder it was connected to. Bucky studied him more critically then, and he was voicing the question before he even realized it.

"When did you last eat?"

Tony gave a distracted "hm?" and really, that was all the answer Bucky honestly needed. The billionaire spared him a glance anyways, and he coughed. "Had to be… five… fifteen… uh, hours, I think—"

Bucky blinked in shock as he stared in disbelief. "Why?"

Tony let out a humorless laugh at the incredulous question. "Ohohoho, my naive child. Fifteen is nothing. Fifteen is the kiddie pool." He paused somewhat guiltily before he snorted. "Just don't ask how long it's been since I've slept," he muttered.

"How long has it been since you've slept?"

Tony dropped the arm, his head tilting back to shake disbelievingly at the ceiling. "What did I— what did I just say? You really are Cap's war buddy, you both have the same level of listening skills."

Bucky ignored the jab and pressed the question, genuine curiosity overtaking his senses. "What… was so important?"

Tony grew quiet, seemingly becoming reabsorbed in inspecting the arm. Bucky had given up on an answer when he spoke up.

"I needed to think. I work. I think. I don't think. I just… do."

Bucky stared at him. "That… made more sense in your head, I hope."

"Nnnnnno, not really, can't say it did."

The silence reentered the room as Tony prodded at the locked joints in dissatisfaction. This time, Bucky broke it.

"You were avoiding me."

Tony shot him a glance before darting his gaze back to the arm with a half hearted shrug. At the lack of an answer, Bucky began to pull his arm away from the table. Tony sighed at the deliberate movement and shoved the goggles up into his hair, tousling the already messy mop as he dug his knuckles into his eyes to rub away some of the tension.

"Not gonna lie. I wasn't sure if you'd kill me if you saw me. Didn't know how deep the…" He waggled a hand near his temple, not unlike how Clint had done only days before. "…programming went." His eyes shifted between Bucky's own right eye and left eye as he seemingly thought.

Bucky huffed a slightly hysterical laugh that sounded more like a sob to him at the explanation. "You still think that?"

Tony rocked back on his heels. "No. I do think you're as screwed up as the rest of our merry band of miscreants here. You'll fit in wonderfully. We'll make you a tee shirt."

Bucky stared at him blankly, the hollow feeling still gaping in his chest as Tony snapped the goggles back in place, his eyes disappearing behind the bug eyed blackness of the lenses. He turned back to scrutinizing the grotesque mechanics displayed out on his table, his face puckering in focus.

"You don't… you didn't… you moved on? Just like that? Why?"

Tony didn't even look up. "That's what I do, compadre. That's what I do." He paused. "If you'd shown up a few yeas ago, though, I probably would've been a bit more… I dunno, bat shit insane? I've had time to process the…" He waved an oddly shaped, angular tool in the air for emphasis. "…insanity effectively."

Bucky pulled his focus back inwards as the distracted response filtered through his brain sluggishly. He couldn't understand it. He doubted he ever would, really, but he just couldn't find a reason for this man to have forgiven him so easily. He was pulled from his musings and caught by surprise when the billionaire muttered under his breath after a few long moments of silent concentration.

"Nearly made me a poster boy for Depends when you just showed up in my doorway, though."

Bucky looked up at him, some dull sense of puzzlement surfacing out of all of the feelings whirling through him. "The door was unlocked," he said dully, his voice unintentionally deadpan.

"The d- the _what? Jarvis!_" Tony shouted at the ceiling, and Bucky winced at the noise. "I swear to God, Jarvis, I'm selling you for an entire fleet of Teslas, man. Why was the door open?"

They were both surprised when Jarvis' voice actually piped into the room this time. It was low and staticy, but unmistakably Jarvis.

"All due respect, sir, but we are not equipped for storing or dispersing the amount of power surge we have just gone through courtesy of our…. enthusiastic Asgardian. The automatic locks in the building may have taken some damage."

Tony waggled his head in a small circle in mocking disbelief as he raised a complicated looking multitool of some sort he had gripped from the bench into the air. "I'm sorry, you're talking, but all I'm hearing is this… this annoying _buzzing_. Ah, no, wait. That's your circuit board in about an hour if you keep giving me excuses."

"Is the uncontrolled free fall of the elevator an excuse for not waiting on your beck and call, sir?"

"The _what?!_"

Bucky listened to the exchange with half an ear as Jarvis snarked right back at the inventor.

He'd been forgiven.

Lord knew how, but he'd been forgiven.

And not just by Tony.

By everyone.

He wasn't sure how they could find it in themselves to give him another chance, but they did. And they meant it. They'd set him aside from the monster he had become these past fifty years, and they _meant_ it.

Steve. Sam. Natasha. Thor. Bruce. Clint.

And Tony.

The man he'd done the most wrong to aside from Steve. He'd forgiven him long before he'd even known the details of who he would be forgiving and why, and if that wasn't a blow to the wall in Bucky's mind, he wasn't sure what was, as the cracks exploded and sunlight poured over his soul, keeping the shadows at bay and filling him with the numb sensation he'd been looking for since the start.

And suddenly, he believed them all more than he ever had. They were right.

If they all had overcome the impossible, then he damn well could too.

He tuned back into the conversation between Jarvis and Tony as Tony tweaked something in his arm, a dull clunk preceding a sudden rush of smooth mobility in an area he was surprised still had the capacity for movement. The inventor was in the middle of speaking, his tone exasperated.

"—then how did it drop? We've gotta get to the bottom of that, that's a no go for business, nuh uh."

Jarvis sounded more irritated than Bucky had ever heard him when he spoke with a sigh in his voice. "The elevator was built with the original components of the building in mind. It is the least up to date feature of the entire tower."

Tony looked up from his ministrations, his mouth gaping as he stared into the mid distance, lost in thought.

Bucky watched him for a long moment before hesitantly breaking the silence, a ghost of his former grin battling its way onto his face.

He could do it.

"You might want to upgrade that."

Tony did a double take, the grin on the former assassin's face throwing him off balance. The billionaire recovered incredibly fast, however, and he shot him a disgruntled frown as he pitched his voice to mock him.

_"'You might want to'_— ah, shut up."

And Bucky understood.

He would do it.

He would heal.

_~FIN~_

* * *

><p><strong>And there we have it. Thanks for the prompt, Meike, I hope you enjoyed this! This was the first fic I have ever written in the Marvel universe, so I hope I did the characters as much justice as I possibly could!<strong>

**I wanted to toss in a quick explanation here- Clint's vague references to his "warm welcome home from Canada" and his odd reactions to... certain... words... (which pain me immensely to write after finishing the other fic) are direct references to the story that I have currently running regarding Clint's whereabouts and shenanigans during "The Winter Soldier." Head on over to my profile and check out "Drop and Cover" for the story!**

**Thank you all again, and I can only hope you enjoyed. If you would please, make this author's day and leave a little review letting me know your thoughts, I would be infinitely grateful. Even if it's one sentence, it's fine, I just adore hearing any and all feedback to help me grow as a writer.**

_**Cheers, lovelies!**_


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